New Hope, PA Shirts

New Hope grew up along a ditch, and it would tell you so cheerfully. The Delaware Canal opened in 1832, and for about a century mules plodded the towpath pulling coal boats between the river towns of Bucks County. When the boats stopped, the artists arrived, then the playhouses and galleries and the browsers who fill the main street every weekend, and the town settled into its long second act as a place people visit to feel slightly more interesting than they were at home. The canal is still there, threading behind the shops, crossed by little footbridges, patient as ever, a strip of stillness a few steps from all the strolling. Our New Hope design honors the slowest commute in Pennsylvania: a mule-drawn barge easing along the canal, the towpath mule up front taking its time, and the busy main street rooflines rising just beyond the water. Local New Hope shops and makers appear on this page as they come aboard ShirtMap.