Trenton's Transportation History

What is today a public park at Trenton's Marine Terminal was constructed in 1931 as part of an improvement plan to the Delaware River's main channel. Still there are the bases of two cranes, listed in the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. Once employed at the Hog Island shipyard in South Philadelphia, they were eventually moved to Trenton, where they were used to load and unload rail cars and ships.

Other interesting points about the Port of Trenton:

• Also known as "the Falls of the Delaware," Trenton is the highest navigable point on the Delaware River. Well before the arrival of Europeans it was a fording point for Native Americans, and continued as one into the 18th Century.
  
• Ferries were the main means of crossing the Delaware River until 1804-06, when the first bridge was built on the site of what is now the Trenton Makes bridge. One of the earliest was the Trenton Ferry, which in the late 17th or early 18th Century crossed the river from the foot of Ferry Street. Another early ferry is believed to have crossed from the Marine Terminal area at the foot of the Riverview Cemetery bluff. Later in the 18th Century, ferries ran from Lamberton (now the Landing Street area) and just upstream from the Calhoun Street bridge.
  
• River Traffic in the late 17th and 18th centuries consisted of sloops, shallops and schooners that came as far as wharves built in Lamberton, the area now around the (foot of Landing and Lalor Streets. Sloops also may have run upstream to the foot of Ferry Street to serve the Trenton House plantation. The peak period of Lamberton's existence as Trenton's port and a regional center of river commerce was circa 1760-1840.
  
• In the 1790s and early 19th century, the first steamboats appeared, led by the efforts of John Fitch. Steamboat traffic continued throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century, running as far as Ferry Street, site of a number of wharves from early 1800s.
  
• In 1918 - 19 a municipal wharf and basin was constructed, remaining in use into the early 1930s, when river commerce shifted downstream to the location of the Marine Terminal. During the 19th Century. steamboats also docked at foot of Lalor Street in late 19th century. While Philadelphia was obviously a key destination, river traffic from Trenton also linked to many other towns along the lower reaches of the river.
  
• Built in 1831 - 34, the Delaware and Rartan Canal connected Bordentown to New Brunswick via Trenton. The canal spurred industrial growth along its course to the north and south of the city, and took traffic and business away from the river in Lamberton and South Trenton. Canal traffic peaked during the 1860s and 1870s, then declined until the canal went out of use in the early 1930s.
  
• Trenton's first railroad was a branch line of the Camden and Amboy that opened in 1839, following the east bank of the D & R canal. Within a year or two the New Jersey Railroad achieved a crossing of the Delaware at Trenton using the Trenton bridge, becoming a forerunner of today's Northeast Corrridor. Other railroads appreared in the second half of the 19th century, notably the Belvidere-Delaware and Delaware and Bound Brook lines. While none of these provided service to South Trenton or Lamberton, a few of the area's larger industrial plants ran spur lines to factories on the river bank.