UPDATING THE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES

The National Park Service announced this month that $50,000 has been secured and allocated to update the 1968 National Historic Landmark nomination for the Delaware and Hudson Canal. The firm of Richard Grubb and Associates of Cranbury, NJ has been awarded the contract, and work will begin soon. The process is expected to take 3 years. 

The entire Canal was put on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1968, just after the Register was created, when then Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, flew over the entire Canal route and proclaimed it worthy of inclusion. Five areas were specifically mentioned because they were well preserved and best represented what the Canal had been like in the era, including the D&H Canal Historical Society’s Five Locks Walk and the DePuy Tavern, which is now being converted to a new D&H Canal Museum and Mid-Hudson Visitor Center.

This exciting news will keep me quite busy. The update was initiated by the Delaware and Hudson Transportation Heritage Council (DHTHC) when member organization The Neversink Valley Museum of Technology and Innovation applied for a Federal grant to renovate an historic, Canal-side and era building, only to find that they didn’t qualify because it wasn’t mentioned in the listing. When the National Park Service (NPS) reviewed the listing, it was discovered that, typical of the early entries, it was nowhere near as detailed as current ones, and therefore in need of an update.

I am the Chair of the DHTHC and we have been meeting with the NPS from the beginning and will be an important contributor, as virtually all the cultural organizations who celebrate the D&H’s story are DHTHC members. In addition, I have been hired by Grubb & Associates to work in the field with them, as I am well acquainted with the extant Canal, having visited 95% of the it in the last decade, and much of it this year, videoing our Where is Our Historian? segments for D&H TV. In fact, I will be back out in the field soon, when the leaves are down, to video more segments for our audience. I will be well prepared when field work begins next year. 

This update of the D&H Canal listing in the NRHP will help all of us who love the Canal by recognizing all of its extant features so we can we continue to protect them, to better tell the stories of this seminal important American enterprise. I love my job!

Bill Merchant

Deputy Director for Collections, Historian & Curator