The Towpath Through Easton Is Still Open. The Park in the Middle of It Isn't.

If you tried to park at Hugh Moore Park this summer expecting to walk down to the canal boat or let the kids loose on the bike skills course, you likely found orange barrels instead. The lot sits across the Glendon Hill Road Bridge, and that bridge has been closed since early June. Not partially closed. Not closed to cars but open to walkers. Closed, full stop, to anyone trying to cross it on foot or by vehicle.

That single closure has quietly reshaped what "going to the canal" means in Easton this fall. The good news, and the part most people miss, is that the towpath itself never stopped running. What disappeared is the detour into the park's interior. Those are two different things, and the difference matters if you're planning a Saturday walk, a bike ride toward Bethlehem, or just trying to figure out where you can still let the dog off-leash-adjacent for a few miles of flat gravel.

What's Actually Closed

The Glendon Hill Road Bridge is a three-span thru truss that carries both vehicle traffic and the D&L Trail across the Lehigh River. It's the only public vehicular route onto Hugh Moore Park Island, and the City of Easton, working with PennDOT's Engineering District 5-0, is using this construction season for structural repairs and a full repainting of the span. During the work, the bridge is closed to both vehicular and pedestrian traffic, with only emergency vehicle access maintained.

That single fact cascades. Because the bridge is the sole way onto the island, the National Canal Museum, the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor's offices, and its research archives are all closed for the remainder of 2026. The Josiah White II, the museum's canal boat, isn't running rides this season either. If your usual fall routine included a boat ride down to the locks or a quick stop in the museum before a walk, that routine is on pause.

The Trail Underneath the Closure Is a Different Story

Here's what doesn't get mentioned often enough: the D&L Trail segment inside Hugh Moore Park runs from the old Locktender's House at Dam 8 to the Abbott Street Lock, known locally as Lock 47. That's the piece of towpath that sits on the island side of the closed bridge, the part most visitors think of as "the canal walk." It's inaccessible right now, along with the museum, the bike skills course, and the playground that sit alongside it.

But the D&L Trail doesn't begin or end at that bridge. It's part of a corridor that runs 165 miles total, and in Easton it connects in two directions that have nothing to do with the closed crossing. Head south from town and you pick up the Delaware Canal towpath, a 60-mile stretch of towpath running all the way to Bristol in Lower Bucks County. Head the other direction and the trail continues north into Bethlehem and eventually Allentown. Neither of those legs requires setting foot on the Glendon Hill Road Bridge.

The workaround the city and the D&L Corridor have both pointed people toward is the Easton & Forks of the Delaware trailhead, at mile marker 59, inside Delaware Canal Park. It's a separate entry point from the museum lot, and it puts you on the towpath without needing the closed bridge at all.

If your plan was ever "park at the museum, walk the loop, maybe rent a bike," that plan needs a new starting point this season. If your plan was "get out on the towpath for a few miles," you were never actually blocked. You just might not have known there was a second door.

The One Detail Worth Confirming Before You Go

Here's where it gets more interesting if you're reading this in September, which is likely if you're planning fall weekends right now. The City of Easton's public notice describes the construction window as beginning in early June and ending in late September 2026, which puts the city's own target just weeks away. The Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor's separate notice on the same project describes the closure running through late December 2026, and the museum's own posted notice echoes that longer timeline, saying it's shut for "the remainder of 2026."

Those two timelines aren't close. One says the bridge could reopen almost any day this month. The other says plan on it staying closed through the holidays. Construction timelines shift, and a repainting and structural repair job on a century-old truss bridge is exactly the kind of project where the final weeks are hard to pin down months in advance, but that's still a gap worth resolving with a phone call rather than a guess. If you're hoping to walk into the park's interior before the leaves are gone, check current status with the city or the Corridor directly before you build a weekend around it.

What You Actually Lose for the Season

To be clear about what's off the table right now, not implied but off the table:

• The National Canal Museum and its exhibits, including the traveling Dynamo! exhibition
• Public rides on the Josiah White II canal boat
• Walk-in access to the bike skills course and playground inside the park
• In-person archive research through the DLNHC offices, though archive requests can still be submitted remotely

What's not on that list is the towpath itself, the 60-mile stretch south toward Bristol, or the trail connection north toward Bethlehem. Those keep running through the entire construction window, accessible from the Forks of the Delaware trailhead instead of the museum lot.

Why This Is Worth Knowing Beyond This Fall

The Glendon Hill Road Bridge dates back to the early 1900s, and this project is a repair, not a replacement. The city and PennDOT are bringing a structure that's carried both traffic and trail users for well over a century back to a state of good repair, not retiring it. That's a different story than a permanent closure or a park losing an amenity for good. It's a single construction season on an old piece of infrastructure, with an end date already in view even if the two agencies involved haven't quite settled on which one.

If you live near the canal corridor and you're the kind of person who tracks what's actually happening in this neighborhood rather than just what shows up on a map, this is the kind of change worth filing away. The trail still works. The park's interior is on pause. And a hundred-year-old bridge is getting the kind of attention that usually means it's still standing for the next hundred.

If you're weighing how changes like this affect a property near the corridor, or you just want a local read on what's shifting block by block in Easton, BHHS Paul Ford Realtors has been paying attention to this town since 1910. Reach out anytime you want a straight answer from someone who actually walks these trails.