Canal history comes alive at Waterloo Village

STANHOPE – Waterloo Village’s transportation heritage will again come alive at the 11th annual Waterloo Canal Day Festival on June 24 (rain date June 25), sponsored by the Canal Society of New Jersey and the NJDEP Division of Parks and Forestry. The Canal Society will offer similar Canal Days two Saturdays a month through the summer and into the fall, on July 8 and 22, August 5 and 26, September 9 and 23, and October 14 and 28. All of these special days will feature musical entertainment, tours of village buildings, boat rides, and merchandise sales, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Canal Society volunteers will be on hand to talk about the area’s history and offer hands-on activities. Waterloo Village is located on Waterloo Road at Exit 25 off of Route I-80, Stanhope, NJ.
Visitors will be able to view a brand-new exhibit featuring the Highlands Canal Boat artifacts recently donated to the Canal Society. The remains of this canal boat were discovered last year beneath a house being elevated to mitigate Superstorm Sandy damage. The boat had been preserved when its frame was used in the house’s construction decades ago; it may be the only original canal boat still extant. Its bow is now displayed in Waterloo’s Samuel T. Smith Carriage House, along with a feed box and other authentic artifacts from the Canal Society’s collection. New interpretive panels provide construction details.
Augmenting the canal boat display, woodworker Earle Post and his assistants will be crafting a full-size canal boat rudder in the carpenter shop using authentic materials throughout the summer.
Richard and Richard Brusco, blacksmiths from Brookside, NJ, will demonstrate metalworking in the blacksmith's shop at the Festival and on Canal Days through October 14.
Scheduled musical performances include Roy Justice, musician and singing canal historian, on June 24, July 22, August 26, and September 23; Irish musicians Terry Hartzell and Rick Weaver on July 8 and August 5; Celtic singers Jan and Jeff Ausfahl on September 9; and the Skylands Dulcimer String Band on October 14.
Waterloo’s water-powered gristmill is in good repair. With water levels high, the mill should be grinding grain throughout the season and offering visitors interactive opportunities.
Waterloo is approximately halfway along the Morris Canal’s 102-mile, five-day route between Jersey City and Phillipsburg, NJ. In the canal’s heyday in the 1860s, the village offered the necessities a canal crew would require. These included a hotel and tavern, general store, church, and blacksmith shop for the canal mules that pulled the boats. The partially restored village is now an open-air museum operated by the NJ Department of Environmental Protection Division of Parks and Forestry.
Village grounds are open daily for passive recreation from dawn to dusk. Admission to the village is free, but there is a $5 parking fee. The Canal Society’s museum will be open most Saturdays. Tours of the Lenape village will be available every Sunday. The State Park Service will offer additional programs and activities on Saturdays throughout the season. For details, contact the park office at 973-347-1835.
The Canal Society of New Jersey is a non-profit organization formed in 1969 to foster the study of the history of New Jersey's Morris and Delaware & Raritan towpath canals, to preserve and restore canal remains and artifacts, and to educate the public. The Canal Society’s Greenway Project is a statewide effort to create a history and recreation corridor along the route of the Morris Canal from Phillipsburg on the Delaware River to New York Harbor at Jersey City. More information about CSNJ programs and events is available at canalsocietynj.org or www.facebook.com/CanalSocietyNJ/?hc_ref=SEARCH, or by contacting macgraphics1@verizon.net or 973-292-2755.