“PARADISE DITCH“ DELAWARE DIVISION OF THE PENNSYLVANIA CANAL LEHIGH RIVER DOCUMENTARY MD51994

Shot over a period of 25 years by one cameraman Roy Creveling, “Paradise Ditch“ shows the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal. After the canal was no longer useful as a means of transportation, 60 miles of it was preserved as a park. The film contains rare and historic footage of the infrastructure of the canal including a canal boat graveyard (4:30), bridges built for mule teams to travel across, locks, and more. The film also has historic footage of the canal in operation with a mule team shown at 6:20, pulling a canal boat. The Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal, more commonly called the Delaware Canal, runs parallel to the Delaware River from the Lehigh River at Easton (home of The National Canal Museum and terminal end of the Lehigh Canal) south to Bristol, as part of the solution to the United States’ first energy crisis. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the Delaware canal to feed anthracite stone coal to energy-hungry Philadelphia as part of its transportation infrastructure bui