A student runs along the towpath during an autumn day in this undated photo. Do you have an interesting towpath story that you can share with PAW? Let us know at paw@princeton.edu.
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3 Responses
Steve Hiltner
6 Years AgoThere’s a place along the towpath, between Washington Road and Harrison Street, where the land broadens between Carnegie Lake and the canal. When my spouse joined the Princeton faculty in 2003, I aimed as a botany-type to bloom where I was transplanted. At the time, that broad patch of land was subject to frequent mowing, which I noticed was keeping many native wildflowers from blooming. Though the land is owned by the University, it is managed by the D&R Canal State Park. I made a suggestion that they save themselves some work and mow that meadow once a year rather than weekly, so the wildflowers could bloom. It’s not always easy to get institutions to change their ways, even when you’re saving them work, but they agreed. Though grass is still mowed along the edge of the towpath, users can now enjoy a loop trail through that broad meadow of Joe-Pye weed, cutleaf coneflower, ironweed, tall meadow rue, with the sound of rowing crews passing by. Seeds collected there have been used to add native diversity to other wet/sunny habitats around Princeton.
Interestingly, I’ve heard that the towpath land was once landscaped as an ornamental entryway into campus, and one can still see remnants of the cherry trees, viburnum hedges, and other unusual specimens planted during that era.
Gregg Hamilton ’75
6 Years AgoIn response to your request for towpath stories (From the Archives, Oct. 4): For a brief period, bleachers were installed on a flatbed truck that would drive on the towpath alongside boat races on Lake Carnegie. This vantage provided an outstanding view of races in progress, and I believe that seats in the bleachers were largely reserved for coaches, team managers, and boathouse staff.
However, during one very close race, the driver paid more attention to the race than to the towpath itself. One wheel lost the path and the truck lurched to the side, lost its footing, and rolled slowly toward the water, depositing several coaches unceremoniously into the drink. The rolling bleachers were retired on that day. No suits were filed, as far as I know.
Editor’s note: Tom Daley ’75 added these details: The incident took place in 1975 or 1976 when the Eastern Sprints (the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges championship regatta) took place on Lake Carnegie. “The truck did not end up in the lake,” Daley wrote. “It came to rest at a 45-degree angle against a tree that prevented it (but not all of the riders) from ending up in the lake.”
James Isenberg ’73
6 Years AgoDuring my years at Princeton, I ran the towpath a lot. I was on the cross country and track teams, and I did four or five marathons per year.
When I was a senior, a movie-production company was hired by the University to do a promotional short. For some reason, they decided that I might be useful. The idea was to film me running along the towpath, then to talk to me about general relativity (the topic of my thesis, and still the focus of my research). I was game.
They filmed me running back and forth along the towpath 10 or 15 times. Then they got me talking about relativity. Two days later, it was back to the towpath for more filming.
A few months later, however, they called me to say they had decided not to include me in the film. I was disappointed — this was the end of my movie career. I was even more disappointed when the movie, Princeton: A Search for Answers, won an Academy Award in 1974.
After I got over my disappointment, I asked if I could see the footage with me running. I was famous in the running community for having incredibly bad running form, and I wanted to see how bad it really was. But the filmmakers wouldn’t do it. And I stopped running the towpath.
The first time since then that I have run the towpath was this past year, when I was in town to give a talk in the math department. I did the loop, from the Washington Street bridge to Kingston and back. Remarkably, it looked like it hadn’t changed a bit: the same roots across the path, the same branches between the path and the lake.
I forgave the towpath.