Delaware Canal Lauded but Perils to its Survival Remain

The renowned 60-mile long Delaware Canal, a Bucks County treasure and a national landmark, is celebrated in the new Fall/Winter issue of Neshaminy: The Bucks County Historical and Literary Journal. The article focuses on the canal’s leading advocate Willis M. Rivinus, who has spent most of his adult life working to preserve the waterway, which opened in 1832 and ended as a transportation entity in 1931, after which Lehigh Coal and Navigation deeded the canal to the state.

Rivinus, who published the channel’s initial guidebook in 1962, was named first chairman of the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor Commission, a post he held until 1991.

Susan Taylor, retired executive director of the Friends of the Delaware Canal, tells Neshaminy that the waterway is perpetually in need, that it requires perseverance and creativity to maintain it, even in dealing with such seemingly minor tasks as mowing the weeds. Climate change, and its unpredictable and terribly damaging weather patterns, represents another major threat.

Jim Brennan offers a poetic homage to the canal, while Jill Lupine spins a tale of terror set on the canal’s towpath.

The challenges of operating a weekly small-town newspaper in the digital age are described in Daniel Dorian’s profile of Bridget Wingert, who with her late husband founded the Bucks County Herald in 2002. Wingert says the Herald might have closed after the pandemic decimated advertising revenue. Instead, the newspaper was turned into a non-profit entity allowing it to accept donations. Despite Wingert’s recently announced retirement, the Herald appears to be thriving and has moved into new headquarters in Doylestown with Wingert’s son Joe as publisher.

In a short story by Don Swaim, the TV regulars on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” gather for a bitter-sweet reunion in King of Prussia, where they reveal that their joyful teenage years did not fulfill the promise many expected.

The Lenape Indians in Bucks County prospered before the colonial era but were brutally forced from their ancestral home to inhospitable regions far to the west. William J. Donahue speaks to Adam Waterbear DePaul, a Tribal Council member and storykeeper for the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania. DePaul describes a three-week canoe journey on the Delaware River to commemorate the spirit of the 1683 treaty between William Penn and Chief Tamanend in which the parties agreed to live together peacefully “as long as the creeks and rivers run, and the sun, moon, and stars endure.” DePaul says the Lenape, despite their diaspora, intend to let people know they still exist. “We want to revitalize the parts of [our] culture that were devastated after the times of hiding and assimilation.”

The new issue of Neshaminy features profiles of two visual artists, the painters Alan Fetterman and deb hoeffner, who spells her name in lower-case letters. It also includes illustrations by Pat Achilles, fiction by Bobby Cohen, poetry by Greg Probst, and a memoir by Carl Reader describing an incredible night at the Bucks County Playhouse in the early 1970s when character actor John Carradine appeared live on stage in the play On Borrowed Time.

The Spring/Summer 2022 issue of Neshaminy: The Bucks County Historical and Literary Journal can be obtained at local bookstores, the Doylestown Historical Society, and on Amazon. The journal welcomes submissions. Information at https://neshaminyjournal.org.