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HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP: State park area improvements hailed

Groundbreaking held for $800,000 project for improved pedestrian safety and handicapped access in and around Washington Crossing State Park, Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath and Washington Crossing

By John Tredrea, Staff Writer
   Hopewell Township residents and officials hailed Friday afternoon’s groundbreaking ceremony of an $800,000 project for improved pedestrian safety and handicapped access in and around Washington Crossing State Park, the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath and the Washington Crossing Bridge.
   All are in the Titusville area of the township.
   The project consists of a new retaining wall with a handicapped ramp and new sidewalk to connect the Washington Crossing Bridge with the canal towpath; more handicapped parking spaces in the state park’s River Drive parking area; and a walkway between the River Drive parking area and the canal towpath.
   ”I was pleasantly surprised by the plans,” said Titusville retiree Larry Gallagher, who attended the groundbreaking. “My wife and I walk the towpath frequently. This project will make it much more accessible, particularly in bad weather, for those with special needs as well as those who are getting older and people with young children in strollers.”
   Diane Hemmer, also of Titusville, is among the stroller-pushers and she likes the proposed improvements very much as well. “I enjoy taking my children for walks in the stroller along the canal towpath. It will be nice to know we will soon have a safe link from the towpath down to the Washington Crossing Bridge and to the parking lot area.”
   ”We’re excited about the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission’s $800,000 grant to provide improved access to the state park, canal towpath and Washington Crossing Bridge. What makes this opportunity special is that it brings communities together in a critically important historical area,” said township Mayor Vanessa Sandom.
   ”It brings together communities of younger people, like moms with kids in strollers, and older people, like me, who can’t quite make it up to the towpath without extra assistance. It brings together the historic community of Titusville with the Borough of Hopewell and even farther away, the township of Lawrence, by providing easier access to the series of trails we’re developing in the Valley. And it helps bring together our community in Hopewell Township with our friends across the river in Bucks County,” the mayor noted.
   Becky Taylor, president of the partially complete Lawrence-Hopewell Trail (LHT), said a goal of LHT officials is to include Washington Crossing Park in the trail one day. “Meanwhile, the more we can do to enhance our ability to get out of our cars and into our beautiful surroundings, the better quality of life we’ll have in our communities,” she said.
   At the groundbreaking, David Blackwell of the township Historic Preservation Commission, said “history will be well served by the accessibility and safety improvements to be built at river’s edge at Washington Crossing State Park. Both the park and the Delaware and Raritan Canal will be more welcoming to all visitors, and the things to be learned there will flourish.”
   Mr. Blackwell added, “This location has been a crossing place on the river since the early 1700s, when Palmer’s Ferry first carried man and beast across the currents. Families from Hopewell Township and Upper Makefield intermarried and carried on business all through the Colonial period using this spot, and the river was a highway to the markets in Philadelphia for both colonies.”
   Washington Crossing derives its name from its being the location of a pivotal point of the American Revolution. “Every American should know that our hopes for nationhood were at their dimmest when Washington’s remnant of an army pulled up the boats behind them and found safety in Pennsylvania in December of 1776.
   ”Everyone should also know it was the last chance of a desperate band that brought the ragged army back across to this spot on the way to the miraculous victory that saved the American cause. The canal banks teach us of a later time in our nation building,” Mr. Blackwell noted.
   Carrying coal and lime in the 1830s, the canal brought changes in commerce and living. Homes converted from wood heat and cooking in massive fireplaces to coal burned in “ten plate” kitchen stoves and Franklin stoves in parlors. Farmers limed their fields to increase productivity. The Colonial lifestyle faded away.
   The Delaware and Raritan Joint Toll Bridge Commission is funding the project through its Compact Authorized Investment program, which provides transportation-related improvement funding to New Jersey and Pennsylvania municipalities within the commission’s 140-mile river jurisdiction.