Kevin W. Wright Bücher

Hauling Pennsylvania anthracite and backloads of iron ore among mountain mines, inland ports and tidewater cites along its 106-mile route, the Morris Canal (1824-1924) with its water-powered inclined planes performed an engineering feat of worldwide note. The Morris Canal and the Age of Ingenuity traces the rise and fall of this hybrid canal-and-railway from technological marvel to quaint curiosity over the course of a century. Built as part of an ambitious network of nineteenth-century "internal improvements," it combined with other canals and railways to solve America's first energy crisis, relieving rising seaboard cities of dependence on depleted woodlots and mud roads. Though superseded by all-season railroads of far greater capacity, the canal fills a formative chapter in the backstory of America's rise from colonial backwater to global economic powerhouse. For those who recognize the importance of innovation to economic growth, the Morris Canal also presents a historical lesson of timely interest.

"Historian, Kevin Wright, and his wife, Deborah Powell, moved into the eighteenth-century Steuben House at New Bridge Landing in 1981 as part of his employment in the NJDEP. They, together with other stakeholders, rejuvenated the Revolutionary War landmark and battleground into the historic gem it is today. Wright was writing A History of Bergen County, New Bridge and the Hackensack Valley when he passed away in 2016. Powell edited and illustrated the legacy project for publication and continues to be involved at the museum site. The layered narrative begins with the geography that greatly shapes the history of the valley and continues with the story of the native communities and the colonial settlements that followed. The turmoil of the American Revolution in Bergen is brought to life, including Thomas Paine's account of the retreat through the area as told in The American Crisis ("These are the times that try men's souls ... "). The book concludes with twentieth-century efforts to preserve the Jersey-Dutch homes and Historic New Bridge Landing. All royalties from the sale of the book benefit the Bergen County Historical Society."

Soon after Philadelphia began to exploit New Jersey's largest hematite deposit in 1758, Andover Furnace and Forge began producing the best metal in the world. Its product was so desirable that the newly formed American military wrested control from Loyalist owners in 1778. This frontier industrial outpost endured thirty-five years before labor costs, competition from cheap imports, careless consumption of woodlands and difficulty in transporting its products finally extinguished its fires. Today, repurposed eighteenth-century stone mills and mansions at Andover and Waterloo testify to the combination of rich ore, abundant water power and seemingly endless forests that long ago attracted teamsters, woodcutters, charcoal burners, miners, molders and smelters to the Appalachian Highlands of New Jersey. Local expert Kevin Wright tells the hidden story of the facets and personalities that once made Andover iron so widely coveted.