Hopatcong

Hopatcong belongs to the lake country of northern New Jersey, within a landscape inhabited by Lenape communities before European settlement. The lake familiar to later visitors was shaped by successive interventions in its outlet. A dam joined waters known as Great Pond and Little Pond to provide power for an iron forge, connecting the lakeshore with the ironworking economy of the northern New Jersey highlands.

During the early nineteenth century another dam raised the water level by six feet so that Hopatcong could supply the Morris Canal. Planning for the canal was already under way in 1822, when George P. McCulloch sought legislative support. Its completed route reached from Phillipsburg on the Delaware to Jersey City on the Hudson by 1837. Locks and inclined planes carried boats across the uplands, moving coal, ore and other goods. Hopatcong thus became a reservoir supporting transport across the state, as well as a lake with a much older Indigenous history.