The Morris Canal series of caches are placed along the canal towpath in partnership with the Waterloo Village Historic Site and the Canal Society of New Jersey to showcase the important early transportation across New Jersey. The Morris Canal connected the Delaware and Hudson Rivers and facilitated development of cities and industry in New York and New Jersey.
The center of New Jersey’s belt of rich magnetite iron ore lies just east of Waterloo. Following the discovery of iron ore all over Morris County, forges had sprung up even before the Revolution. These forges relied on charcoal to refine or “smelt” iron ore.
The cutting of New Jersey forests to produce charcoal for the iron industry changed the landscape of the state more than any other single activity in recent history. The trees that posed a major obstacle to the settler were of extreme value to the burgeoning industrial revolution. By the end of the 18th century, almost all of the trees in Sussex County were cut to provide charcoal to fuel the forges and furnaces in iron production. What we currently see is probably the third growth, since the land was again cut over for lumber after the charcoal burners went away. The production of charcoal was a major enterprise and the air was blue with smoke. To produce charcoal, 30-50 cords of wood were stacked together in concentric circles and slowly burned over two weeks on a cleared level area of earth about 30 feet in diameter. These round “charcoal platforms” are still visible in some local forests.
Charcoal Platforms
Although early settlers opened mines and built bloomery forges and iron furnaces, it wasn’t until the Morris Canal provided an efficient transportation system that the area began to develop its full potential. The availability of large shipments of coal through the canal helped to revive this industry. In a single stretch of the canal between Rockaway and Andover, a distance of 15 miles, there were 56 forges, most of which had been forced to shut down because they had practically exhausted the local supply of wood fuel.
Andover Iron Mine
Villages like Stanhope became industrial towns and places like Waterloo sprung up to service the growing needs of iron workers and canal boatmen. Waterloo was first established in the 1760s as the location of the Andover Iron Company’s Finery Forge, to work pig iron smelted seven miles to the north. The ironworks was closed in 1780. Edward Cooper and Abraham Hewitt formed the Trenton Iron Company in 1845. They acquired the Andover Mine in 1847 and a mule tramway was built to transport iron ore from the Andover Mine to the canal at Waterloo.
By the mid 1900’s when all the mines finally closed, more than 50 million tons of iron ore had been mined in New Jersey.