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
As I did get the chance to look out of my hotel room at night, there was a bit of inspiration that led to this week’s theme of Hill. In the town of Brno, there is a spectacular view of Spilberk Castle, which has stood atop the hill for over seven centuries. Therefore, your challenge is to share your favorite hills and/or what you find atop them.
My townhouse community, Montgomery Hills, lies on the southern border of the Montgomery Township and Somerset County, fenced in by the woods on the northeast side of Princeton’s Autumn Hill Preserve and the the nearby borough of Rocky Hill, 2.9 km away, at the foot of the Rocky Hill Ridge and across the waters of the Millstone River, along the D&R Canal Trail.
I’ve photographed many of the historic homes and buildings in Rocky Hill over the last 18 years, but the challenge keyword is “hill”, but I wanted to capture images for the challenge, so I started first with Rocky Hill.
I can’t say much about the post office. All my mail goes through the post office in Carnegie Center which serves several areas that fall under the “Princeton“ zip codes.
Built-in 1745, the Rocky Hill Inn is a historic colonial inn that by the 1800s had become a “fashionable summer excursion stop-off for city folks,” but which today is a gastropub with multiple rooms, that serves delicious American pub-style burgers and craft ales.
From Rocky Hill, I drove 7km west back into Skillman and over to Burnt Hill Road, passing Cherry Hill Road on the way. The roads in Montgomery Township are narrow one-lane roads, the type you might find in a small farming town, steep embankments and ditches in many areas with no shoulder and no sidewalks. For the images on Burnt Hill Road, I parked in a clearing on Burnt Hill Road just near a hedgerow of wildflowers across the road from an abandoned farm bridge.
From Burnt Hill Road, I drove over to Spring Hill Road but didn’t find anything interesting to photograph. The road, which winds its way up into the trees to East Amwell Township, is a fun drive in the right car. It was while enjoying the ride that I realised that photographing the hills around the area would be challenging. There is no open hilltop to see the valley below and no open field below from where I can photograph the hills.
From Servis Road, I over the one-lane bridge that connects Hollow Road to Grand View Road, and down the hill to the bottom of Grand View. I grabbed some photos of the hills.
I was disappointed, decided to head home, and took Mountain View Road to Cherry Hill Road, to 518 to Orchard Hill Road and then back home.
The remainder of my images were captured from the driver side of the car, while I parked on the road, keep a close eye for traffic behind me. It was not ideal.
I was out capturing these images for about 90 minutes, with almost half of that time spent driving. My wife saw the disappointment on my face. She reminded me that my grandparents (Ollivierre) lived in a windy area at the top of Monkey Hill in Bequia, which is also the name of my consultancy. The image below is an old family image; not one from my catalogue.
View from atop Monkey Hill, Bequia. I scanned this from an old damaged print my mom gave me.
The image below was taken by my mother of the family house on Dorsetshit Hill, near Kingstown, Saint Vincent, where I spent some of my youthful years and last years of high-school. It’s a partial view, from the wrap-around veranda, of the Kingstown harbour and the mountains. The word verandah, which I have always used in the British West Indies, but rarely hear in the USA< is from the from Hindi, but research indicates that the veranda itself originated in the British West Indies. I digress, but the verandah and British Colonial architecture is something that I hope to someday explore in detail with my camera.
Dorsetshire Hill Road is a long winding road that leads down to Kingstown from Dorsetshire Hill. At the foot of the road is an intersection of streets near a neighbourhood which has been historically referred to as “Sion Hill”. it’s where my dad grew up.
