Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
- Albert Einstein
September 14, 2025
The Delaware & Raritan (D&R) Canal State Park is one of central New Jersey's most popular places for boating, jogging, hiking, bicycling and fishing. The 70-mile-long park includes wooden bridges, spillways, locks, waste gates, and stone-arched culverts, as well as bridge and lock tender houses. The canal is a great place for lovers of history, and people like us who enjoy riding their bicycles on trails.
The canal consists of two parts: the 22-mile long "feeder canal" wanders along the Delaware River from just north of Frenchtown to Trenton. The 36-mile main canal winds northward from Trenton to New Brunswick.
We rode our bicycles on the northern end of the feeder canal from Lambertville to Frenchtown in June 2024. You can read about our ride and view photos of the trail by clicking on this link to a previous blog post. In June 2025 we returned to the feeder trail so we could ride the southern section from Lambertville to Trenton's Cadwalader Park. You can also read our blog post about that ride by clicking this link.
We picked a sunny September day for our return to Trenton, New Jersey so we could complete another segment of the trail. We started our ride where we left off in June 2025, at Cadwalader Park.
 |
| Highlighted section of trail we rode on this trip |
Cadwalader Park is the largest urban park in the city of Trenton. The nearly 100-acre green space is also the city's oldest park. At one time the park had a train stop along the long gone Belvedere & Delaware Railroad. Much of the D & R Canal Feeder Trail passes along the former rail corridor.
 |
| View from the trail |
We followed the trail as it wound its way through the city, crossing over the canal at intervals until the trail split. We took the right-hand trail following the canal until it disappeared beneath the city. The left-hand trail is known as the D&R Greenway. Taking that path makes for a shorter ride because it avoids winding around and crossing over streets in the busy city, but it doesn’t follow along the canal. We opted to take the Greenway later in the day when we returned to Cadwalader Park.
The main trail through the city can be a little difficult to follow. Even though we watched carefully for trail signs, we still managed to get slightly off course for a couple of blocks until we reconnected with the trail.
Near Southard Street in Trenton, the canal disappeared, perhaps underground, just as it intersected with the U.S. 1 highway. It popped back up into view again about a mile later at Mulberry Street. From there the trail frequently paralleled the busy U.S. 1.
 |
| View from the trail |
About 4 miles outside of Trenton, we passed by the Carnegie Road Bridge Tenders House, one of many located along the trail. The first bridges along the D&R Canal were A-framed swing bridges. The house, built in 1860, housed a "bridge tender", whose job was to observe traffic on the canal and operate the bridge. Unfortunately, the historic house was very much in need of repair. The swing bridge was replaced years ago with a more modern one.
 |
| Carnegie Road Bridge Tender's House |
Just before the intersection of U.S. 1 and Interstate 295, we came to a long ramp leading the trail up a switchback and over a pedestrian bridge over the highway.
 |
| Pedestrian Bridge over U.S. Highway 1 |
Continuing on, we came to another bridge crossing and bridge tender house at Port Mercer. The current bridge replaced an earlier swing type bridge. The house was open for free tours that day and we stopped to take a peek inside before heading back on the trail.
|
 |
A little further on, the trail passed beneath the Dinky Railroad Canal Swing Bridge. The king-post style swing bridge replaced the original A-frame swing bridge that was commonly used along the canal when it first opened.
 |
| Dinky Railroad Canal Swing Bridge |
As we approached Princeton, we could see Carnegie Lake and the "Ideal Course" on our left. The Ideal Course serves as a training site for Princeton University's rowing team and it's where the Carnegie Lake Regatta is held. We could see rowers in sculls as we rode on the trail between the lake and the canal. We also saw a lot of kayakers on the canal along this section of the trail.
 |
| Kayaker on the canal |
Next we came to the Millstone Aqueduct. The original aqueduct was erected shortly before the canal opened in 1834. It allowed canal boats to safely cross the Stony Brook (which was later flooded to create Carnegie Lake) where it met the Millstone River. The current aqueduct was constructed a little north of the original one in 1868 and the original was demolished. Later, after the canal became a state park, a wooden pedestrian walkway was added to continue the trail on the east bank of the canal. It's a popular fishing spot. We passed several fishermen casting out their lines as we passed over the walkway.
 |
| Millstone Aqueduct |
Just beyond the northern end of Carnegie Lake where the Millstone River empties into it, we arrived in Kingston, which is one of the most heavily visited places along the trail. There were 14 locks along the canal at one time, and lock #8 is still located at Kingston. Next to it is the c.1834 lock tender's house and a tollhouse/telegraph station.
|
|
|
The lock tender's house was open to the public on the day of our visit. Two original first-floor rooms contained displays related to the area's history and an interactive model demonstrating how a lock works.
|
|
After viewing the house and the lock, we headed back the way we had come. In Trenton we took the D& R Greenway instead of the main canal trail. The out-and-back ride for our ride from Trenton to Kingston was 31.5 miles long and took us a little over 4 hours including breaks and the stops to see the tender houses.
We enjoyed riding the D&R Canal Trail very much in the past, and this segment of the trail was no exception. Other than briefly losing the trail riding through Trenton, the rest of the trail was easy to follow. As in the other segments, this stretch of the trail was mostly level, the gravel was well packed and there were only a couple short stretches of single track. There were a lot of historical points of interest and plenty of beautiful scenery to soak in. We're looking forward to returning to Kingston at some point in the not-to-distant future so we can continue our ride on the next segment of the trail. If you would like to see a video of our ride on the Trenton to Kingston section of the D & R Trail, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.