Digging up mystery on Province Line Road

My downtown New Egypt exploring done, I had a lead to track down. A few weeks ago, reader Rick Donnelly contacted me about another Province Line Road, this one separating Mercer and Burlington counties from Monmouth a few miles out of Plumsted Township. Not only was it a seeming continuation from the Mercer County Province Line Road outside of Hopewell that I'd written about last year, it runs through the state's most prolific archaeological site, along Crosswicks Creek in Ellisdale.

Crosswicks Creek, near Ellisdale.
Where dinosaurs roamed.

Ivan's the paleontology guy of this partnership, so I didn't plan to go too far into the site without him along. I don't know enough to differentiate a fossil from a weird rock, but it still would be fun to notice something unusual. I did enough research before I left Hidden New Jersey HQ to learn that the Ellisdale site is managed by the New Jersey State Museum, and collecting specimens is prohibited. No way would I pick something up to take away to show Ivan later.

Aside from the fossils, that area of New Jersey is interesting from a county border perspective. Depending on which road you take, you could be in Mercer, Burlington, Monmouth or Ocean County. Or, if you're on Province Line, you're straddling two of 'em. As I tooled around, the pentagonal blue county road markers were switching counties with alarming frequency.

Rick had written that the fossil site is near the one-lane truss bridge where Province Line passes over Crosswicks Creek. Typical for a county road, there was no shoulder to park on, but I was fortunate to find enough of a clearing among the trees and brush to pull my car off the road near the bridge. Monmouth County Parks rules were posted on a nearby sign.

The odd thing was, after I crossed the road, I saw the Monmouth signs on that side, too. Wouldn't it be Mercer -- or Burlington -- there? Maybe my map was a little off? From the road I'd noticed a tall yellow stake in the ground, several yards into the woods. It wasn't until I got closer that I noticed the aggregate concrete block next to it. Looking down, I saw an oxidized metal nub on the top, reminiscent of the tops of the meridian markers we'd first found in Flemington last year. Must be a surveyor's marker, right? I was even more certain when I noticed an M on one side and a B on the other.

Today's Hidden New Jersey story
is brought to you by the letter M.
For Monmouth, or maybe Mercer.

One had to be Burlington, that was easy enough. But does the M stand for Mercer, or Monmouth?

Times like this remind me I need to improve my exploring kit. It would have been really helpful to have a compass with me. Monmouth is northeast of Burlington; Mercer is directly north. My gut says the M is for Mercer, but I think there's a good argument for Monmouth, given the county park signs.

This raises an interesting point about county history. When the United States gained independence, New Jersey had only 13 counties. Over time, the additional eight were carved from the existing ones, until 1855, when the last one, Union, was created from the southern end of Essex. Monmouth was one of the original four counties created in 1683, while Mercer was crafted from portions of Hunterdon and Burlington in 1838. Thus, to be denoting Monmouth for sure, the marker would have to have been planted before 1838. My gut, once again, tells me it's newer than that, but I've been known to be wrong before.

I'd say this mystery was solved pretty quickly, but we still have the matter of the fossils to contend with. We'll definitely be returning with a compass and GPS. And maybe we'll even find out if there's another county marker in the area. That might be a hard one to locate though: a few yards further, the trail is interrupted by a deep wash with no bridge.

Calling Fred Flintstone: Mastodons in Cranford!

Based on a favorable scouting report from Birding on the Net, Ivan and I struck out two Sundays ago to see who we'd find near the Deserted Village in Watchung Reservation. We'd gotten a somewhat late start after a long day in Atlantic County, so we weren't sure what, if anything we'd discover. An extensive hike brought us an immature red tailed hawk being hassled by blue jays, as well as orioles, a rose-breasted grosbeak, scarlet tanager and others, but the real find was along the park road on our way out.

Driving Glenside Avenue back to Tracy Road, I saw a temporary lawn sign with the outline of what looked like a hairy elephant. The lettering read "Mastodon. Trailside Nature and Science Center."

A nice chunk of the Cranford mastodon's jaw,
plus a tusk to the rear.

A mastodon? This was a new one on me. The county had completely revamped the museum a few years ago to feature much of the local flora and fauna, but they hadn't added any prehistoric creatures. I couldn't remember seeing any fossils in the old museum, either, so this deserved a special visit. As Ivan noted, sometimes the most hidden history is buried beneath our feet.

That was even truer than we realized. Turns out the mastodon in question was found in one of our stomping grounds, Lenape Park in Cranford. WPA workers were digging an artificial lake there in 1936 when they came upon a tusk and jaw from a young male mastodon. Geology professors from both Princeton and Rutgers came to the site to supervise the excavation of the relics, which they later theorized had been transported from elsewhere as the Wisconsin glacier receded.

While the mastodon who gave us these relics may not have been a resident of what later became New Jersey, the species wasn't a stranger to the state. An 1844 discovery in Hackettstown revealed five full skeletons, and the results of a dig in Mannington in the late 1800s yielded nearly a full mastodon skeleton, now a centerpiece of the Rutgers Geology Museum in New Brunswick. A litany of other discoveries is scattered through much of the state.

Here's the mysterious part of the Trailside exhibit: it mentions additional mastodon finds in Union and Westfield, but the accompanying website states that there's no surviving evidence or scholarly notes on artifacts or their whereabouts. Could it be that someone's hiding a mastodon head in their attic? Could it be a stepping stone in a garden, the way another skull was used in Pemberton before being identified for its paleontological value? Check your backyards and cellars and let us know!

Haddonfield: Where dinosaurs still tower

A casual visitor to Haddonfield might wonder what a life-sized dinosaur statue is doing downtown in this historic, upscale Camden County town. Was a Godzilla movie made here? Did a grade school class petition to have their favorite prehistoric creature placed here? What gives?

Hadrosaurus Foulkii sculpture
by John Giannotti

This shopping-district denizen is actually a representation of the Hadrosaurus, the first find of a nearly-complete dinosaur, and the event that put Haddonfield on the paleontological map in the mid 1800s. It's also a demonstration of what a determined young person can do when presented with some pretty neat data about his home town.

First, the discovery. Back in 1858, summer visitor William Foulke heard that some really big bones had been found 20 years earlier in a marl pit behind the home of his host, John Hopkins. Marl was used as fertilizer at the time, and the area was rich in the deposits, which also contained the remnants of the ancient sea which had once covered the area. Being a bit of a fossil hound himself, Foulke hired assistants to help him explore the pit in hopes of finding more bones. They soon hit pay dirt and along with prehistoric shells and other detritus, were able to unearth more bones from this single specimen than other digs had found of any other creature to date. The find was dubbed Hadrosaurus foulkii, and according to a website about the find, the name derives from the Greek words hadros (large, bulky) and sauros (lizard), along with the name of the man who'd originated the search, but it also seems to be named for the town where it was found. The bones were sent to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and studies on the specimen there contributed to the Academy's reputation as the foremost authority on paleontology for its time. Foulke eventually found another specimen nearby, Hadrosaurus' predator Dryptosaurus aquilunguis.

For over a century, the site was little known outside scientific circles, and one might even wonder if local residents had any idea it was there. The site had become a dumping ground over the years and was largely in disarray. That all changed in 1984, when Boy Scout Christopher Brees chose it as his Eagle Scout project. Today, thanks to his efforts, the find site is commemorated a small park above a ravine in a residential setting at the end of Maple Avenue in Haddonfield. The site has also been named a National Historic Landmark, and the Hadrosaurus was named the state dinosaur in 1991.

Christopher's family continues to maintain the memorial park, and while it's tiny, it's very pleasant. Beyond a plaque and explanatory signage, the park has a picnic bench on which someone (maybe the family?) has thoughtfully left some accurate and not-so-accurate dinosaur toys. You can also hike down to the ravine where the bones were found, but there's no exact marker of the dig site.