How New Jersey Lost Its Favorite Lake Resort: Lake Hopatcong

Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey, was once the state's favorite lake resort, and it began as a canal company's reservoir. The Morris Canal Company dammed its outlet and raised the surface by some eleven feet to keep boats afloat on a waterway that carried coal and iron across New Jersey. By 1890 the writer Gustav Kobbé could call it "the highest navigable lake within 350 miles of New York City," and the Hotel Breslin was charging transient guests five dollars a night. On August 19, 1902, the New York Times reported that the hotels were all crowded and visitors obliged to camp out. But the waterway that created the lake was never meant to serve visitors. In the winter of 1912, a bill to abandon the Morris Canal came before the New Jersey legislature, and on February 3, 1913, the inventor Hudson Maxim, who owned about six hundred acres and three miles of shoreline on the lake, signed a pamphlet against it. Today the lake covers roughly 2,500 acres and runs about nine miles, shared by four towns in two counties: Hopatcong, Jefferson, Mount Arlington and Roxbury. One original horse from the Illions carousel that Louis Accommando bought in 1937 stands in the Lake Hopatcong Historical Museum, and a monument marks the park's entrance. This is the story of how a canal's dam, the railroads, and the grand hotels built a summer playground — and how the closing of the canal and the loss of its amusements brought its golden age to an end. A full history documentary about Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey — from the Gilded Age resort boom to the carousel horse in the museum. Copyright & Fair Use Disclaimer • This video is a non-commercial, educational history documentary created for commentary, criticism and research. • Some archival photos and footage are used under the principles of Fair Use (Section 107, U.S. Copyright Act) for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.