00:18 - Hi. Welcome to the National Canal Museum.

00:21 - I'm Selina Fano, and I'm the director of museum

00:23 - and archives at Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor.

00:27 - And I'm excited to show you around today.

00:30 - We're located in the beautiful Moore Park in eastern Pennsylvania,

00:34 - and we are nestled between the old rail beds, the canals and the Lehigh River.

00:38 - We're inside our 2024 special exhibition,

00:41 - which is called Putting Down Roots Native Trails to Interstates.

00:45 - I'm really excited to share it with you because it's a celebration of both

00:48 - the history and the evolution of transportation along the corridor.

00:53 - The exhibition features panels designed by our collections manager,

00:57 - Wendy Blewett, and it traces how footpaths went to bike

01:00 - paths along the corridor.

01:04 - Hello, my name is Whitney Davison, and I'm the education manager

01:07 - here at the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor.

01:10 - And our main program, the National Canal Museum.

01:14 - This museum is small but mighty.

01:16 - We have packed a lot of things in a very small space.

01:19 - One of the things that we pack in is these beautiful model

01:22 - boats of the different canal boats that we had in the region.

01:26 - This one right here, the red one, is what the Lehigh

01:29 - Canal boats looked like that went on the Lehigh Canal.

01:32 - The other boats around here are made by different artisans from various time

01:37 - periods and various locations, and they depict what boats look like

01:41 - from different regions throughout Pennsylvania.

01:45 - Part of the story that we tell here at the Canal Museum is the human side

01:48 - of canal, and canal and families operated together on the canal boat.

01:53 - A captain when he was hired, was encouraged to bring his entire family

01:57 - along with him to live on the boats

01:59 - because they were working about 8 to 9 months out of the year.

02:03 - So this exhibit is a representation of the type of stove

02:07 - that they would have had on the canal boat.

02:09 - This is an antique left over from the time period, and the exact size

02:14 - that a mother and wife would have had to cook

02:16 - all of her meals on the boat every day for her entire family.

02:21 - Meals were a big part of our canal story.

02:24 - There was no engine in a canal boat.

02:26 - There was no current in the canal.

02:28 - There was no sail on the boat.

02:30 - So the entire force to pull the canal boat came from mules.

02:34 - The people who started the Lehigh Coal Navigation were Quakers, and so they cared

02:38 - a little bit more about animals than the average businessman of the time.

02:42 - And they felt that if you had to own your own mule, you would treat it better.

02:47 - You know, that old phrase worked like a rented mule,

02:51 - so you were able to lease or rent a canal boat

02:55 - friendly high coal navigation, but you could not lease or rent a mule.

03:00 - You had to buy your own mules.

03:02 - The idea being that they would be treated better, fed better,

03:05 - cared for better, rested more frequently if they were owned.

03:09 - And that was generally true.

03:11 - They actually had inspectors along the canal that would walk along

03:14 - and check the mules to make sure that they were in healthy standing.

03:18 - So a huge part of a canal captains family's life revolved around their mule.

03:24 - There was something called a mule tender, which was often a child

03:27 - who spent long days walking next to their mules, making

03:30 - sure that they were staying on the towpath and that they were safe,

03:34 - and that they were going where they were needed to go when they needed to go.

03:38 - Their mules generally got to the point where they could run their own day.

03:41 - They really didn't need a human with them.

03:44 - But of course it was always best to keep a human with them

03:47 - so they would walk next to the mules from about 4:00 until as late as 10 p.m.

03:52 - every single day, they would strap baskets onto the mules heads

03:56 - for their meal times, and the only time they would really stop

03:59 - was when they would walk through, as we call it, at a lock

04:04 - here at the National Canal Museum.

04:06 - We still run our boats from Mule Power, and we have two mules

04:11 - here, Hank and George.

04:12 - You will get a chance to see them later in the program.

04:16 - The Lehigh Canal was built in a little over two years, and it went 46 miles.

04:21 - And as you can see by the mural behind me, when canals were built, they were built

04:24 - 100% by hand, using nothing more than animals in hand tools.

04:29 - As you can see in the picture behind me, there are many men that are digging deep

04:33 - into the ground to dig the canal.

04:35 - The canal was about six feet deep in length, but they didn't dig down

04:39 - that far.

04:40 - What they would do when they could is dig up against a hillside.

04:44 - They would dig three feet down into the ground, against the hillside,

04:48 - and then move the dirt up to make a wall that was six feet high.

04:51 - So they used ingenuity whenever possible.

04:54 - They used brute force when necessary to create that canal system

04:58 - that we can visit and see to this very day.

05:01 - Our museum has a nice mix of artifacts and hands on exhibits

05:06 - that you can come and experience for yourself.

05:10 - One of the reasons we have so many hands on, interactive Stem related exhibits

05:14 - is because the canal system in America was the first

05:17 - civil engineering project of its kind.

05:21 - So we like to tell the story of how things were created

05:24 - in a time period before large, complex machines using simple machines.

05:29 - The one behind me is the pulley system, and we like to show that you can

05:35 - lighten your load by having more involve pulley as you go down the system.

05:40 - Another simple machine that we like to show at the museum is what

05:44 - we would call a lever, because the tiller was something that the captains

05:48 - used to steer the ship, and a tiller is nothing more than a lever.

05:52 - We have an exhibit here in which you can climb on and become the captain,

05:56 - and move the tiller back and forth to navigate down the canal.

06:00 - Another great thing about our museum is it is really geared

06:03 - towards young learners, the preschool group of kids.

06:06 - So when you come here and visit, your older children can run around

06:09 - learning all about simple machines.

06:11 - Adults can go around and look at all the artifacts and read all of the

06:15 - all the labels and informative information around the museum,

06:20 - but your littlest ones can get involved as well.

06:22 - We have barrels called Open Me barrels, with the idea being

06:26 - that little ones can open the barrels and see what's inside.

06:29 - They can touch the things in there.

06:31 - They can take them out,

06:33 - and parents don't have to worry about getting in trouble for their kids.

06:36 - Touching artifacts.

06:38 - There aren't many artifacts left from the Canal era,

06:41 - mainly because most of the things

06:43 - that we use were made of wood, and we're around water all the time,

06:47 - but we do have one relic left over that we're pretty proud of,

06:51 - and that is one of the last wooden dashers that we know of to be

06:55 - still available to see a dasher was something that was put behind

07:00 - the Nighthawk, which was essentially a headlight for the canal.

07:04 - It was a large lantern, and the Dashers would be decorated in

07:08 - whatever way the canal captain might like to decorate it to show off his boat.

07:13 - While the paint has peeled off of the dasher and is no longer able

07:17 - to see what it looked like.

07:18 - We still do have one intact wooden dasher left,

07:22 - which we are very proud to display at the museum.

07:25 - Once you're finished inside the museum, you want to make sure to head outside

07:28 - to our canal boat ride.

07:30 - We are one of only a handful of mule drawn canal boat rides in the entire country.

07:36 - And we're right here in Easton, PA.

07:38 - The image behind me is what you would see as you are riding down the canal

07:43 - for a 45 minute ride and you're surrounded by beautiful, serene nature.

07:48 - And it is quiet and it is peaceful.

07:51 - It really is an experience like no other.

07:55 - Hi, my name is Doug Milne.

07:56 - I'm the captain of the Josiah White two.

07:59 - It's the replacement for the Josiah White one.

08:02 - The Josiah White one sailed here at the Canal Museum from 1977 to 1992.

08:08 - And it's replacement that Josiah White two,

08:10 - has been sailing since 1993.

08:13 - That boat was originally entirely wood.

08:16 - Our boat replacing it, has a steel hull.

08:19 - In fact, the last steel hull created by the Sparrows Point shipyard

08:23 - of Bethlehem Steel, brought up here in pieces welded together.

08:27 - The wooden boat then built on top.

08:29 - And it's been running in the canal since 93.

08:31 - We operate throughout the summer, from June until the end of September.

08:36 - Three rides a day, Wednesday through Sunday,

08:39 - with passengers on top of about 80 people.

08:42 - With more room below.

08:44 - We also have occasional dinner cruises where we feature music on board, the boat

08:49 - dinner served down below, and a 2.5 hour

08:53 - ride on the canal all the way from one end to the other.

08:57 - Our usual ride is a 45 minute ride that goes up to the lock tenders house.

09:01 - We explain the history of the the, canal,

09:04 - the building of it, and its importance to American history.

09:08 - This canal was the first privately built canal in America

09:11 - and possibly in the world.

09:13 - It was built by two businessmen who had a wire

09:16 - and nail mill down outside of Philadelphia.

09:19 - Their names were Josiah White and Erskine Hazard.

09:22 - Josiah White was responsible for getting this canal built,

09:25 - and his partner, Erskine Hazard, was largely responsible for raising money

09:29 - and making sure that they had funding to build the canal

09:31 - in a time when canals were built only by governments.

09:35 - It was a massive project dug entirely by men

09:38 - without any power equipment to help them do the job.

09:41 - The original building of the canal was essentially a bet with Pennsylvania.

09:46 - Pennsylvania was building the Delaware Canal, and Erskine

09:49 - Hazard and Josiah White went to them.

09:51 - Having realized the importance of anthracite coal, which had 20 years

09:55 - before being discovered up in the Pocono Mountains.

09:58 - At the time, we went through the War of 1812,

10:01 - which cut off all coal supply to Philadelphia.

10:03 - And once they realized they did not have any local source of coal,

10:08 - they started looking into the mountains where anthracite had been discovered,

10:11 - but remained unused because of the difficulty in using it.

10:15 - Once they had finally uncovered the way to use anthracite coal,

10:19 - they started buying up coal fields

10:21 - and asked

10:21 - Pennsylvania, who were already building the Delaware Canal, to build them.

10:25 - Another canal up the Lehigh River, and Pennsylvania replied no.

10:29 - They were having a little trouble building the Delaware Canal.

10:31 - And so they told White in Hazard, we'll tell you what,

10:35 - if you want to build a canal, you can build it yourselves.

10:37 - You have to use your own money, your own manpower.

10:40 - But if you can get it done

10:41 - in the ten years, it's going to take us to build the Delaware.

10:44 - We will give you all of the land that it flows through for free.

10:48 - In fact, they threw in the Lehigh River

10:50 - because they were absolutely sure the project would never be completed.

10:54 - They felt that ten years would go by, and that after ten years

10:58 - they would default on their contract, and Pennsylvania

11:00 - would not only get all their land and their river back, but a half dug canal.

11:04 - They hadn't had to pay for.

11:05 - So white and the hazard.

11:06 - They signed their contract in 1823.

11:10 - Construction was actually begun in 1827, and against all expected

11:15 - White and Hazard and the engineer, they hired a man named Canvas White,

11:20 - who had already worked on the Erie Canal,

11:22 - managed to build the entire canal system in two years.

11:26 - 47 miles long from Easton up to Mark chunk, which today is known as Jim Thorpe.

11:31 - This canal represents the first privately built and owned canal

11:36 - in America and the Lehigh River, which Pennsylvania expected

11:40 - to have returned to their hands ten years after 1823,

11:44 - actually returned to the ownership incomplete

11:47 - of Pennsylvania in 1966.

11:50 - So White and Hazzard very clearly completed their job.

11:53 - Not only ahead of time, but under budget, and started

11:57 - or helped to start the Industrial Revolution in America.

12:01 - One of the unique things about working here at the National Canal Museum

12:05 - is that we present history in the way that it was lived back in the 1820s.

12:10 - They started building canals throughout America.

12:13 - The Erie Canal was so successful that ultimately many other

12:17 - states started building their own canals, including Pennsylvania.

12:20 - When White and Hazzard began building the Lehigh Canal,

12:24 - they had no idea how much

12:25 - they were going to change the way things were done in this country.

12:29 - Now our boat has no motor, it has no engine.

12:32 - We believe that presenting history in the way it was

12:35 - lived is important to understanding the story.

12:39 - So our boat is drawn by mules.

12:41 - So it's the same way that things were done

12:43 - back in the 1820s and well up through the 1930s.

12:47 - Our mules, Hank and George, are really the stars of our show.

12:51 - They are 21 and 24 years old, respectively,

12:54 - and have been working here for 18 years, entertaining the public,

12:58 - drawing our boat on a 45 minute ride up and down the canal

13:02 - to a lock tender's house past the Glenn Van Dam, and to give our public a better

13:07 - understanding of how this canal changed not only this region, but most of America.

13:13 - Because of the building of this canal and the presence of anthracite coal

13:16 - here in Pennsylvania.

13:18 - The iron industry got a very quick start up here in the Lehigh Valley.

13:23 - The Glendon Ironworks was not the only ironworks on this canal.

13:28 - Within ten years after this canal had been built.

13:31 - The island that I am currently standing on, which is wooded

13:34 - and beautiful, was lined with brick and stone buildings,

13:38 - all taking in anthracite coal from the Pocono Mountains.

13:41 - Iron ore from new Jersey using like local limestone as a flux

13:46 - to help the iron flow out of iron ore

13:49 - and into trenches in the casting room floor of the foundries.

13:54 - That central trench fed small trenches off

13:56 - to either side, and those smaller trenches fed smaller trenches.

14:00 - Still, when the men working in the casting room

14:03 - looked at the single central trench filled with red hot liquid iron

14:06 - cooling to bars that would eventually be four feet long and 80 pounds each.

14:11 - They commented that the little trenches off to either side

14:13 - looked a bit like piglets suckling on their mother, and so they called

14:17 - the finished bars of iron pig iron, which is where we get that title,

14:21 - and where our local baseball team, the Iron Pigs, got their name.

14:25 - Those bars of iron would be loaded back onto boats

14:28 - and brought down to factories and foundries

14:31 - that would eventually turn them into the telegraph wires that crossed

14:34 - America to the weapons of war with which we would hold off the British

14:38 - should they ever come back after the War of 1812, and eventually,

14:42 - ironically, to the rails, wheels and boilers

14:46 - of the American railroad system that would come along in the 1860s

14:49 - and 70s, ultimately putting all canals out of business

14:53 - because railroad cars could travel farther, faster,

14:56 - carry heavier loads, and work through the winter.

14:59 - This canal was closed in winter time because they were worried that water

15:03 - frozen over might damage the canal boats left in the canal itself,

15:07 - or the lining of the canal, which was entirely lined with clay.

15:11 - So from the end of November until the end of March,

15:14 - this canal would be drained of water through a very ingenious set of waste

15:20 - gates, that, because we are on a canal section

15:23 - beyond the dam, exist well above the level of the river.

15:27 - All the water over a million plus gallons of water in this section of canal,

15:31 - which is two and a half miles long, six feet deep and 60ft wide,

15:36 - could be drained out of this canal in something like half a day.

15:39 - If a boat sank, if a gate broke, all of those things could be repaired

15:43 - with an empty canal.

15:44 - And once you closed the waste gates

15:46 - and reopened the feeder gates at the top of the section of canal,

15:49 - the entire canal section could be reopened and refilled in about 12 hours.

15:55 - By that time, you would have 200 boats waiting, each with their set of mules

15:59 - getting ready to tow their boats up and down this canal

16:03 - to the various factories and foundries that existed all along the shores

16:07 - of this canal and the Lehigh River. Beyond.

16:10 - The lock tender's house that I'm standing in front of

16:12 - is actually the third lock tender's house to exist on this site.

16:16 - It was built in 1929, and replaced

16:20 - two other lock tenders houses, each of which was damaged either by flood

16:23 - or fire in the 100 years previous to the building of this lock.

16:28 - Tenders house.

16:29 - The downstairs section of this lock, tenders House

16:31 - is open on the weekend for people to come visit, and it has been restored

16:35 - to pretty much what it looked like in 1929 when it was built.

16:39 - Unlike other lock tenders houses, this one has indoor plumbing and electricity,

16:44 - something that people living here previously could not have dreamed of.

16:48 - Next to the lock tenders house is our guard lock,

16:51 - one of two kinds of locks that exist on this canal, the other being a lift

16:55 - lock, which would overcome the elevation change going up

16:58 - 355ft into the Poconos.

17:01 - A guard lock exists at the same level as both the canal

17:04 - and the river beyond it, and simply guards the canal from being damaged by flood.

17:10 - This canal

17:11 - was flooded on several occasions, most notably in 1855

17:15 - when several of the lock tenders, houses and several of the dams

17:18 - were damaged by a massive flood that was aided

17:21 - by the deforestation of Pennsylvania during the War of 1812.

17:26 - In 1812, we cut down so many trees in eastern

17:28 - Pennsylvania, northern new Jersey and southern New York State that it took

17:32 - well over 80 years to grow back enough trees to see the kind of greenery

17:37 - we're seeing around us now because of the lack of trees.

17:41 - Water was allowed to flow freely in places where it ordinarily

17:45 - would have been stopped and soaked into the ground by forest growth.

17:49 - The result of that was that the water flowed so quickly

17:53 - that it damaged dams all the way down to the Lehigh River, and took down houses,

17:59 - caused a fairly

18:01 - serious fatality count and took a long time to rebuild

18:05 - from the lock tender's house was given by the canal company at each lock,

18:10 - free of charge to a lock tender's family to live in.

18:14 - The deal was you get a free house.

18:16 - We're not going to pay you very much,

18:17 - but as long as you open and close the lock gates from 4:00 in the morning

18:21 - until 10:00 at night, six days a week, through the canal season,

18:25 - from March to November, you'll have a free house to live in.

18:29 - Now, because they weren't paid very much lock tenders, quite often

18:33 - the fathers living in the houses would end up getting jobs somewhere else.

18:37 - They would go work in a forager, a foundry somewhere downstream

18:40 - that left the wife and the children to open and close these lock gates,

18:44 - the lock gates each way between 6 and 8 tons, and they're made out of heavy

18:48 - timbers, and ordinarily would have taken for strong men to open.

18:52 - And it would take about ten minutes to open each gate.

18:55 - But because of the installation, by the builders

18:58 - of this canal of rack and pinion gearing to operate those gates,

19:02 - somebody as small as a seven year old boy could come out, turn the crank

19:07 - on the side of the red roofed shed on either side of the lock itself,

19:11 - and could open each of those gates in about two minutes, all by himself.

19:15 - Most lock tenders open side businesses to service the canal boats

19:19 - that went up and down this canal morning, noon and night.

19:23 - This was known as laundry lock.

19:25 - You can't wash your laundry

19:26 - on a moving coal boat, but you could drop your laundry off here.

19:30 - The boys in the family would fill a black cauldron with fresh, clean river water.

19:34 - They'd light a fire under it, get it boiling, pour it off

19:37 - into a washtub, and mom and her girls would wash your clothes for you,

19:41 - hang them to dry and tie them in a nice, neat bundle for you to pick up

19:44 - as you made your way back down from picking up your coal up in the Poconos.

19:49 - Most lock tenders opened places where you could buy fresh baked goods

19:53 - or fruit or vegetables, things that were difficult to get Ahold of.

19:57 - If you had to tie your boat up and go all the way into town.

20:01 - This way, the canal boats kept on moving.

20:03 - The captains made their money into the lock tenders.

20:07 - Families made extra money on the side

20:09 - while dad was off working wherever he'd gotten his job downstream.

20:14 - This is Hank,

20:15 - one of our two mules here at the Canal Museum.

20:18 - The other one over there is George.

20:20 - They've been working together here for 18 years now.

20:24 - These guys weigh about 1,100 pounds each.

20:27 - When people find out our boat weighs 96,000 pounds, they're worried

20:31 - a little bit about how much work these guys are going to have to do.

20:35 - But honestly, they are capable of pulling more than twice

20:39 - the weight of that boat and mules back in the day.

20:43 - They would pull those boats for 18 hours a day.

20:47 - These guys have three easy rides of 45 minutes apiece,

20:50 - with about a 45 minute break in between each ride.

20:54 - Hank here is 24 years old, and George over there, he's 21.

20:59 - Ordinarily, they get hooked up

21:01 - front to back, so we have a lead mule and a trace mule.

21:05 - They're joined together by heavy leather traces,

21:08 - which allow them to pull evenly on the weight of the boat.

21:12 - At the end of a 120ft long tow line, which goes out to the tow path

21:16 - in their harness, where they can safely tow our boat up

21:20 - and down the canal without any worry at all.

21:24 - They enjoy, hey, they love eating grass,

21:27 - and one of the things we like to say is that mules are good at two things.

21:31 - One is walking and they do it very well.

21:34 - They come out of their stable at about two miles an hour.

21:37 - When we attach them to a tow line at the front of the boat.

21:40 - They'll walk on at about two miles an hour.

21:42 - And this regulated speed and traffic on the canal.

21:46 - In fact, there was a speed limit on this canal of four miles an hour

21:50 - to ensure that wakes from the boats wouldn't damage the canal itself.

21:55 - Hank loves to do his job, and he loves to meet people.

21:59 - They're very gentle animals.

22:00 - We do ask people not to feed them because sometimes they'll see fingers

22:04 - and think that they're carrots.

22:06 - He'll usually just nibble on my hand, but

22:09 - we like to keep safe here, so we ask folks not to feed them.

22:13 - Either way.

22:14 - They've been working here for 18 years, as I said before,

22:17 - and they've been doing a great job doing it.

22:20 - They had pressure on draft mares as mothers,

22:23 - if you don't know, mules don't exist in nature.

22:26 - Mules actually are a hybrid species.

22:29 - They're a mix between a horse and a donkey.

22:32 - And the only way you can get a mule is by mixing a horse with a donkey.

22:35 - Mules themselves are born sterile.

22:39 - So while these guys look like brothers, they actually had separate mothers.

22:43 - Hank came from Missouri, Georgia from Texas.

22:46 - And Hank appears to be thinking that I'm looking like a bit of a snack today.

22:52 - He's a good boy.

22:52 - He likes stand in for pictures, and he's awfully good

22:55 - at spending a little bit of time with the public.

23:00 - Each set of mules is unique

23:02 - because they do not hand down their genes from one generation to another.

23:06 - So the size of horse, the color of horse will dictate what sort of mule you get.

23:12 - These guys had pressure on draft mares as mothers,

23:15 - and because they looked so similar, the man owning George in Texas

23:19 - bought Hank at an auction to pair the two of them.

23:23 - We bought them at the ages of three and five, when he decided

23:26 - they were a little more mule than what he really needed,

23:30 - and they've been working for us ever since.

23:32 - When they get retired, they will be retired as a pair, because

23:36 - while they may not be related, they pretty much see each other as brothers.

23:40 - And if you take one mule away from the other, well, they get a little upset.

23:44 - So we try and make sure that they're always together.

23:47 - Stop eating my car.

23:49 - There we go.

23:50 - He's going to nibble on my, badge here.

23:54 - So when they get retired, they will get retired to a small farm

23:57 - about five miles from here, where we retire them for the winter

24:01 - every year when the canal is closed because they spend their time

24:06 - in the winter just eating grass and wandering around.

24:09 - They come back to us, filled with winter coat and a little on the overweight side.

24:15 - So we get them out on the canal as quickly as we can, start brushing them down

24:20 - and grooming them to get rid of that winter coat

24:23 - and get them to the nice sleek shape you see now, and eventually back down

24:28 - to working weight, where they will spend the rest of their summer enjoying

24:32 - being out with each other on the towpath and having a good time meeting the public

24:37 - when they come to visit us.

24:39 - Thank you for joining us for a tour of the National Canal Museum.

24:42 - We would love to see you down here at Moore Park.

24:45 - For more information, visit Delaware and lehigh.org.