Boonton is filled with glimpses of the past, from historic Main Street to the remnants of the Ironworks and Morris Canal. If you want to visit a little history, try the Boonton Walking Tour along the Morris Canal Greenway, a statewide green corridor that promotes recreation and public education. Start your tour at the trailhead in Grace Lord Park, and read up on the past at the kiosks you’ll find there. Then take a walk through Boonton Gorge and see if you can spot the yellow trail blazes along the path. Here is some info you’ll learn:
• The Morris Canal, completed in 1831, was built to carry coal and materials from Pennsylvania to the eastern seaboard.
• The Canal extended 102 miles from Phillipsburg, PA up to Lake Hopatcong, NJ and then down to Jersey City, NJ.
• The New Jersey Iron Company built ironworks in the 1840s including a rolling mill, puddling furnaces, and a foundry powered by a dam on the Rockaway River above Boonton Falls.
• Water was funneled to the top of Inclined Plane 7 East, which raised and lowered canal boats through the gorge.
• The Ironworks were located on the bank of the canal and received raw materials and shipped out finished iron to be sold.
• Workers built houses on Plane Street, and then up the hillside to create what we know as Boonton today.
Go to www.canalsocietynj.org, website of the Canal Society of New Jersey, and download a “Boonton Walking Tour” brochure to help you explore. You can also find more info about the Greenway, as well as great videos and future plans, at www.morriscanalgreenway.org.
