LACKAWAXEN, PA — Ticket sales are now open for an event commemorating the 175th anniversary of the first crossing of the Roebling Aqueducts, to be held on Saturday, April 27. The reservation deadline is Friday, April 19.

An admission fee of $25 per person will include a 10 a.m. walking tour of the National Park Service’s Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct, starting on the Pennsylvania side. 

The tour will be guided by professor and historian Paul C. King and will be followed by a program at the New Inn at Lackawaxen from 12 noon to 4 p.m.

The program includes a buffet lunch, a canal music sing-along with Dan Engvaldsen and exhibits, as well as historical remarks by Sullivan County Historian John Conway, D&H Transportation Heritage Council (D&HTHC) president Bill Merchant and by King.

The inn is located at 188 Scenic Dr.

About the aqueducts

When the first boat crossed the Lackawaxen and Delaware Aqueducts on April 26, 1849, expectant crowds gathered to witness the event. The opening of these new aqueducts signaled a new chapter for the Delaware & Hudson Canal.

The D&H Canal and Gravity Railroad were important and successful American enterprises throughout the latter three-quarters of the 19th century. The coal supplied through them had a significant impact on the economic development and industrialization of both Pennsylvania and New York City.

The D&H Company hired engineer John Augustus Roebling, who had previously supplied the wire rope that was used on the Gravity Railroad, to design and oversee the construction of four suspension aqueducts. These aqueducts would carry the canal’s traffic over the Lackawaxen, Delaware and Neversink Rivers, and over Rondout Creek.

Today, the Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct is the oldest existing wire suspension bridge in the United States and the only one of the four Roebling aqueducts built for the D&H Canal to continue to function as an active bridge.

To reserve, email names to D&HTHC secretary Laurie Ramie at laurie@upperdelawarecouncil.org or call 845/252-3022. Checks should be made payable to DHTHC and mailed to P.O. Box 192, Narrowsburg, NY 12764 or paid electronically through the Venmo or PayPal icons at the www.dhthc.org home page.

For more information about the history about the D&H Canal and its aqueducts,  Click here