Cultural Landscape Report for Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct Site and the Zane Grey Property, Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River

Killion, Jeff; Kulick, Maryrose; Foulds, Eliot

The Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River is a unit of the National Park Service established in 1978 to conserve, protect, and interpret 73.4 miles of the river and its outstanding natural and cultural resources. Straddling New York and Pennsylvania, land areas in the Upper Delaware River corridor are rural in character, consisting of large expanses of forest broken by occasional farms, settlements, and low-lying marsh areas along the river. Over 90 percent of the land in the river corridor is in private ownership. Public land consists of state forests, local parks, and boating and fishing access sites. The National Park Service owns 30.4 acres, a small fraction of the just over 55,575 acres of land within the river corridor. The Upper Delaware valley is rich in structures that reflect its history and cultural development. Prehistoric archeological sites, historic architecture, and historic engineering and industrial sites are all abundant in the valley. The National Park Service preserves and maintains two such sites − Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct Site and the Zane Grey House − at the confluence of the Upper Delaware River and Lackawaxen River, in the Township of Lackawaxen in Pike County, Pennsylvania, and the Town of Highland, Sullivan County, New York. Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct is the oldest existing wire cable suspension bridge in the United States. John A. Roebling, who later designed the Brooklyn Bridge, built the 1848 aqueduct that once carried the Delaware and Hudson Canal over the Delaware River. In the 1980s the aqueduct underwent adaptive reuse restoration as a one-lane bridge. The aqueduct, listed as both a national historic landmark and a national historic civil engineering landmark, was honored by the American Institute of Architects in 1989 for its rehabilitation design. Portions of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, a national historic landmark, are located in the river corridor. The Zane Grey Site preserves the home and grounds of American writer Zane Grey (1872-1939), author of Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) and other popular adventure novels and stories that were a basis for the Western genre in literature and the arts. The home is now a museum filled with memorabilia from Grey’s successful career as an American novelist, as well as from his other endeavors in dentistry, baseball, world traveling, and fishing. The cultural landscape report is the primary tool to inform long-term management decisions regarding a cultural landscape in the national park system. The report follows the general format outlined in A Guide to Cultural Landscape Reports: Contents, Process, and Techniques (NPS 1998). The geographic scope of the project is focused on the federally owned parcels of the park that comprise Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct, Delaware and Hudson Canal, and the Zane Grey Property, as well as privately-owned properties between the two sites on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. The purpose of this CLR is to provide valuable information about the histories of the properties, document defining landscape characteristics and features, identify existing resource issues and threats, and provide treatment guidance needed for the short and long-term preservation of significant resources. The focus of the CLR is to present alternatives for enhanced pedestrian connectivity within and between the park unit’s fee-owned parcels and improve interpretation of surviving canal remnants. The first chapter of the CLR, Site History, documents the physical history of the landscape with narratives, historic photographs, maps, and period plans for 1898, 1929, and 1978. The second chapter, Analysis and Evaluation, reviews the site’s historical significance according to National Historic Landmark and National Register criteria, evaluates the historic significance of the landscape, and identifies landscape characteristics and associated features that contribute to the property’s significance and historic character. It also includes existing condition maps. The third chapter, Treatment Recommendations, proposes enhancements to existing historic and non-historic landscape features to improve the visitor experience. Treatment recommendations will be supplemented with graphics to convey the intent of each project. Overall, the report will provide information needed to inform park compliance and support planning, treatment, protection, and management of the cultural landscape.

Cultural Landscape Report for Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct Site and the Zane Grey Property, Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River

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