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The Delaware Canal Towpath segment of the D&L Trail runs nearly 62 miles down the Pennsylvania bank of the Delaware River from Hugh Moore Park in Easton to Bristol Marsh. The first two miles are on the Lehigh Canal, and the rest are on the Delaware Canal towpath inside Delaware Canal State Park. It is towpath flat, dropping less than 200 feet in all, and passes 23 lift locks, aqueducts, camelback bridges, the Nockamixon Cliffs, and the river towns of Riegelsville, Point Pleasant, New Hope, Washington Crossing, and Yardley. The surface is mostly crushed stone and packed dirt, with paved street links through Levittown and Bristol. The D & L Trail: Lehigh Canal (South) segment continues upriver from Easton.
D & L Trail: Delaware Canal Towpath
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the D & L Trail: Delaware Canal Towpath has about 116 to 165 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, running, e-biking, birding, biking, and walking, with April, May, and October the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the D & L Trail: Delaware Canal Towpath!
In half of past years, color along the D & L Trail: Delaware Canal Towpath peaks October 25 to November 5, typically around October 30. The trail has 34% deciduous coverage, with the majority being red maple, white ash, yellow-poplar, northern red oak, sweetgum, sugar maple, and chestnut oak.
Josiah White and Erskine Hazard founded the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company in 1818 to move anthracite out of the hills at Mauch Chunk. Their Lehigh Canal was rebuilt for two-way traffic from 1827 to 1829, 46 miles from Mauch Chunk to Easton. Pennsylvania dug the Delaware Canal from Easton to Bristol between 1827 and 1832, and the first coal boat reached Bristol that July. Upstream, the company dug the canal on through the Lehigh Gorge to White Haven by 1843 and chartered the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad to reach Wilkes-Barre. In June 1862 a dam failure above White Haven washed the gorge canal out for good. The Lehigh and Susquehanna replaced the drowned canal and the Central Railroad of New Jersey leased it in 1871, while Asa Packer's Lehigh Valley Railroad hauled coal down the far bank. The last paying boat left the Delaware Canal in October 1931, and the company closed the Lehigh Navigation in 1932. Pennsylvania made the Delaware Canal a state park in 1940. The Central Railroad of New Jersey gave up its gorge line in 1972. Lehigh Gorge State Park took the empty rail bed in 1980, and Congress created the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor in 1988. Its namesake nonprofit has joined towpaths and rail beds into the 165 mile D&L Trail since. This segment is the Delaware Canal itself, the mule towpath from Easton past Riegelsville, the Nockamixon Cliffs, New Hope, Washington Crossing, and Morrisville to the canal's foot at Bristol.
D & L Trail: Lehigh Canal (South)Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park Trail
