Griggstown Lock on the Delaware & Raritan Canal is about one kilometre south of the Griggstown Causeway and about 7.4 km, a 10-minute drive, from my home in Skillman. The Kingston Lock is approximately 7.4km to the south. The Millstone River runs more or less parallel to the D&R Canal, with many more twist and turns along the way. I captured this set of images with my Fujifilm X-T2 + Soligor 35mm f/2.8 Wide-Auto M42 vintage lens, a recent purchase, using an in-camera Kodachrome II film simulation recipe. Except for perspective correction, all of the images are otherwise untouched straight-out-of-camera.
The asphalt, crushed stone, and dirt surface of the Delaware & Raritan Canal State Park Trail, part of a transportation corridor between Philadelphia and New York, follows the Delaware & Raritan Canal towpath that dates to the early 1800s. The New Jersey portion of the trail starts in Trenton, runs along the Delaware River for almost 117 kilometres, before ending at Landing Lane, just north of George St. in New Brunswick on the outskirts of Rutgers Universit. The trail follows the outer eastern edge of the Princeton University campus and passes through Kingston, Griggstown and East Millstone. The waterway is tree-lined supporting many types of wildlife, including bald eagles, herons, and ospreys, as well as smaller bird species. Walleye, bass, and shad thrive in the Delaware Canal.
Points in Griggstown or Princeton offer canoe rides along the water-route. During heavy rains parts of the trail become impassable from floods. Flooding effectively cuts me off from areas of New Jersey to my east and north, especially if the Millstone River is also flooded.
I’ve photographed the area around the Kingston Lock in the [Delaware & Raritan State Park])https://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/maps/KingstonTrailsMapFinalDraft.pdf_ many times in the past. The photos included here are nothing new in term of subject matter, and the composition varies slightly from previous captures. I chose to photograph using the Dramatic Classic Chrome Film Simulation Recipe created by Ritchie Roesch. I chose to do this in preparation for another project proposed by Ritchie. Except for cropping and perspective correction, all of these images are as-is from the camera.
A lock is an enclosed chamber in a canal, dam, etc., with gates at each end, for raising or lowering vessels from one level to another by admitting or releasing water.
My daughter, Kiran, thought that using the homonym, loch, was stretching things it a bit too far, given that loch means lake in Scottish Gaelic. I argued that the Kingston Lock Controls water flow through the Delaware & Raritan Canal which runs alongside Lake Carnegie, the common name for Loch Carnegie. I lost the argument.
The sky was overcast with 100% cloud cover. The Kingston Lock is about 4 kilometres from my home in Skillman. There were no shadows to be found, but the images have a great deal of contrast between light and dark areas. I parked in the empty parking lot, grabbed my tripod, slipped on my headphones and walked over the lock. I like to listen to music, one of several EDM playlist in iTunes, when I out on private photo walks by myself. The music calms me and helps me focus.
In the early 18th century, the Lenape Native Americans who lived in this part of what would eventually become New Jersey sold 4 km2 of land to Jediah Higgins, who established the town of Kingston. The small village is located on the Lenape Assunpink Trail, crossing the Millstone River at what would later be named the King’s Highway. Kingston is the only area of New Jersey that exists within the borders of two counties, Middlesex County and Somerset County.
Its location on the main road, King’s Highway, connecting the colonies made Kingston a major transit stop for stagecoaches and numerous inns and taverns were established. The Kingston Lock, which included a toll house that had one of the first telegraph offices in 1846, is number 8 of 14 built along the 73-kilometre D&R Canal, portions of which today are part of the D&R Canal State Park.
Eventually, after the paving of US Route 1 in the 1920s, commercial traffic moved further east, and the canal was closed in the early 1930s.
Kingston’s historical importance is well recognised with entries on the State/National Register of Historic Places, including:
– Kingston Mill Historic District
– Kingston Village Historic District
– Lake Carnegie Historic District
– Princeton Nurseries Historic District
– Delaware and Raritan Canal
– Withington Estate/ Heathcote Farm,
– King’s Highway (Upper Road/Lincoln Highway) Historic District
– Rockingham State Historic Site
