The Delaware and Raritan Canal (D&R Canal) is a canal in central New Jersey, United States, built in the 1830s that served to connect the Delaware River to the Raritan River. It was intended as an efficient and reliable means of transportation of freight between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New York City, especially coal from the anthracite coal fields in eastern Pennsylvania. Before the advent of the railroads, the canal allowed shippers to cut many miles off the route from the Pennsylvania coal fields, down the Delaware, around Cape May, and up along the (occasionally treacherous) Atlantic Ocean coast to New York City.