Confronted by the Jersey Devil at Leeds Point

Following a moderately successful birding day on the trails at Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge this past weekend, we decided to check out some of the nearby side roads. Most people who visit Brig only go to the main portion where the visitor center and wildlife drive are... and that's fine. We wanted to see a little more.

Gotta love a healthy wetlands.

Leeds Point Road forks off of Route 9 north of Smithville and leads to other parts of the refuge, including the Scott's Landing Boat Launch. The focus there changes from wildlife viewing to duck hunting, and a rather ingenious Eagle Scout project uses a series of signs that look like birds to illustrate the permitted shooting range. Given that we're well out of hunting season, we could enjoy the sights of healthy spartina waving in the breeze without being concerned with random shots.

Binoculars always in hand, Ivan wanted to explore the stand of trees near the parking area, so in we went. We quickly felt enveloped by pitch pines, reminding us that we were, after all, in the outer reaches of the Pinelands. While blotches of sunlight shone down through hurricane-created holes in the canopy, the gnarled trees made the place feel unnatural and weird. I couldn't wait to get out.

I really don't like to make generalizations or contribute to shaggy dog stories, but we were in Leeds Point, which added a slightly mysterious undertone to the small forest. Not far from the waters of the Atlantic, the hamlet may or may not be the legendary birthplace of the Jersey Devil. Depending on which source you consult, he might have been born farther inland at Estellville, or perhaps amid a swamp along the Mullica River, which, come to think of it, is pretty much where Leeds Point is. The horned-and-winged one never seemed like much of a Shore guy, though there's a tavern called JD's in Smithville that serves a very tasty Jersey Devil burger.

Satisfied that the stand of trees wasn't very birdy at the time, we found our way back inland and turned right onto Oyster Creek Road. Just a few yards down from the intersection, we came upon this sign:

Well, gee. We didn't know whether to be amused or concerned: amused for the obvious reason, concerned that we might not be welcome visitors, no matter our innocent intent. Were the locals fed up with rowdy explorers looking to raise the devil? Or were they pranking their neighbors on the next road? If they truly had negative intent, it's not likely someone would have put so much effort into an artistically-rendered three-dimensional sign. Instead, they'd have just spraypainted "Get out!" on a plank of plywood and nailed it haphazardly to a tree.

We continued driving down the road, next coming upon a creatively-executed sign advising motorists to watch for and respect motorcycle riders. Fair enough. Bikers would have enough of a challenge with the road, given the uneven, pockmarked macadam.

What we found at the end of the road was a mix of weatherbeaten Down Jersey fishing shacks and small bungalows that weren't quite as worn. Folks may live in one or two of them, but for the most part they look like shelters for weekenders who want to get a few hours sleep before jumping in their outboard-powered rowboats in the predawn hours. All they really need is space for a couple of air mattresses, indoor plumbing and a fridge for bait and beer.

Next to what looked like an old boat yard was the Oyster Creek Inn, which had attracted a sizable holiday weekend crowd. I could have sworn I'd found this place once on my own, during the depths of winter, but it was a lot livelier on a sunny spring weekend. The marsh, just north of the tract we'd seen at Scott's Landing, looked fresh and healthy. If the Jersey Devil had been born here, he'd be hard pressed to be evil. That is, until the greenheads come out in the humid languor of July.

The Jersey Devil and the Pot House: glassmaking at Estellville

Fresh from our find at Weymouth, Ivan and I headed a slight bit eastward on the Black Horse Pike. I'd heard about another ancient Pinelands factory nestled within an Atlantic County park. We were so close by, we had some time before we were expected elsewhere, why not go for it?

The former Estellville glassworks operated from 1825 to 1877 and was reportedly among the first to produce both window glass and bottles. About three and a half miles south of Mays Landing proper, it's now surrounded by an expansive parkland of playgrounds, picnic areas and untouched woods. The factory site itself is about halfway along the circular park road, well marked out with wayside signs. Though the buildings have deteriorated to about the same level of falling-apartness as the site we'd just visited, helpful numbered maps direct visitors to various features of importance in glassmaking.

Like the Weymouth Furnace, the glassworks was made up of several buildings, but in this case, each represented a stage of the manufacturing process. We first went to the pot house where workers made the vessels in which sand, potash and limestone would be mixed and melted to make glass. According to the wayside, replacement pots were needed often, as they'd become damaged by the high heat of the melting process.

Several steps away, a three-room building once held the furnace where the raw glass was made. It was also where glassblowers would shape the molten material into cylinders that would be flattened in another building and eventually cut into windowpanes. Here's the wild thing: the blowers would often strap themselves to the wall as a counterbalance against the 80 pounds or so of molten glass they'd pick up from the vat with their blowpipes. Those who chose not to take the safety step might -- and sometimes did -- find themselves falling into the pit to meet an unfortunate and painful end.  

Between the furnace building and the flattening building, I noticed several small objects glistening in the sun. They turned out to be weathered pieces of glass, possibly from the factory itself, as none of it seemed thick enough to have been broken bottle shards from a more recent visitor.

The park signs and online guide led me to believe that foundations of workers' houses could be found in the far reaches of the tract, so Ivan and I followed a path into the nearby woods. As we walked, I remembered something I'd read in the handy WPA Guide to New Jersey, which only mentioned the glass factory as a side note. The writers were more interested in highlighting Estellville as the birthplace of the Leeds Devil, more commonly known these days as the Jersey Devil.

Before we go much further, I want to make a statement: we here at Hidden NJ try to avoid the usual Jersey legends and apocryphal stories in favor of the more obscure yet plausible. I'm rather proud that we've published for nearly a year and a half without making hay of Mother Leeds' thirteenth child, but when you stumble upon the purported birthplace of the ol' JD, you have to say something. Plus, he's got wings, so I figured I could include him as a birding feature.

I mulled the possibilities as we walked farther down the path than my research had indicated the workers' homes would have been. The path was well maintained and lined in places by flowering bushes, but who knew if we were walking into territory where a cloven-hooved flying beast would rather be to himself? Focused on finding some of the birds whose songs he'd been hearing, Ivan ignored my suggestions that maybe I'd misread the map and we should instead be looking for the buildings elsewhere.

We decided to turn around after we reached a small deck overlooking a creek and pilings that once apparently supported a bridge. Walking back to the glassworks, we did find an elusive flying creature, but it turned out to be a yellow billed cuckoo rather than ol' JD.

Given the park's size and diversity of habitat, we'll likely be headed back to Estellville sometime soon for birding at a more productive time of day. I guess that means we'll also have another chance to check in on the state's scariest and most active citizen, the immortal Mr. Leeds.

Traveling into the vortex of Ong's Hat

Running into some massive construction-related congestion on the Parkway north from Brigantine, we took the first available exit and ended up on Route 72 west.

Nowadays, it's almost a reflex to grab the GPS to get the next best route, but in this case, we knew it was just going to put us back into the road mess we were seeking to avoid. Other than the traffic light-infested Route 9, there aren't a heck of a lot of other roads that link coastal South Jersey back to home base. It was a job that only a map could handle, as Ivan reminded me. I was riding shotgun, so he suggested I look in the glove compartment, as there had to be something useful there.

I rattled around and found an official New Jersey map published by the state… for the Bicentennial. Yup, on the back was the characteristically bad photo of then-governor Brendan Byrne, and a classically colonial scene on the front. Ah, yes, New Jersey was the crossroads of the Revolution. Not surprisingly, while it showed the key mid-20th century roads, the map was just a little inaccurate after 35 years. Shadows of the proposed paths of Interstates 287 and 78 were outlined where there are now regular rush hour traffic jams.

"This map is ancient!" I exclaimed.

"Hey!" Ivan protested. "Some of those dirt roads are still in existence!" Come to think of it, we were in the part of the state where that's true, so this map was as good as anything else that might be hiding in the glove box. Who was I to talk, anyway? I was consulting a 70 year old WPA travel guide to New Jersey for roadside attractions. As we continued west on 72, I scanned the map, looking for an alternate route, I saw a familiar name.

"Ong's Hat! We've gotta go to Ong's Hat!"

What the GPS would have looked like,
had we still been using it. No road is always the sign
of a good road trip destination.

It's a funny name for a strange little town ... or lack of town. Among Jerseyphiles, Ong's Hat is both famous for its story and a prime roadtrip destination because it doesn't really exist anymore. Located deep in the Pinelands, it was a thriving little community during colonial times and into the mid 1800’s. According to legend, it was home to a dandy named Ong who was quite the ladies' man. His multi-dating ways apparently angered one of the local young ladies so much that she grabbed his silk top hat and tossed it into a tree in frustration. The hat was so noticeable and stayed in the tree so long that it became a landmark: "Make a right turn at Ong's Hat."

Much, much later, Ong's Hat became the setting for a very strange supernatural tale that takes a variety of different directions, depending on who you talk to. The writer Joseph Matheny claims that it all started with a man named Wali Fard, who bought a few hundred acres of the Pinelands in the 1950’s. Along with a couple of anarchist lesbians (or are they lesbian anarchists? You decide!) and some runaways from Paramus (why is it always Paramus?) he started a cult called the Moorish Science Ashram.

That’s not all that strange, but it gets better. Allegedly, the site held a vortex that led to an alternate universe, discovered by discredited Princeton physics professors who were somehow influenced by the nearby Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base. The proximity to the famed Lakehurst Air Naval Base probably didn’t hurt either: it was the site of the famous Hindenberg explosion. Through a series of experiments, the scientists found the gateway to another dimension, which they’d accessed through use of a capsule shaped like a human sized egg. I wouldn’t doubt that there were drugs involved, too. From a story like that, you’d kind of expect there were. Or maybe even hope… In any case, it’s the kind of story that makes the Jersey Devil pale by comparison.

With this kind of information in hand, is it any wonder I got Ivan to steer the car to the traffic circle where Routes 72 and 70 intersect? Yes, like everything else in the Garden State, Ong’s Hat isn’t far away from a traffic circle, the original Jersey vortex.

Trouble was, I can never remember which of the turns off the circle will bring you to Ong’s Hat, and it’s not as if there’s a sign to point you. And once you do make the turn, there’s a good couple of miles of solid scrub pine before you reach any sign of civilization. In other words, it takes a while to confirm you’re on the right path. Unless you’re very good at recognizing specific trees – not species of tree, the tree itself. Or unless you’ve got the GPS running, which we no longer did.

After a piece, though, I realized we had, indeed, made the wrong turn, which created a small bit of frustration, but we worked it out and found our way to Ong’s Hat Road. And then zipped right through it, avoiding the vortex completely.

Downtown Ong's Hat.

In reality, the supernatural story was the product of some very active imaginations on the internet, and there’s nothing at Ong’s Hat now but the shuttered Magnolia Road Tavern. It used to be a biker bar, with bars on the small windows and the Tasmanian Devil and other Warner Bros cartoons painted on the walls. The tavern was for sale when I first visited in late 2009, and it’s still for sale today. If you have $155,000, an interest in vortices and a willingness to run a biker bar, it's all yours.

As for Ivan and me, we'd already had a long day and we just wanted to get home. We'd have to leave Ong's Hat (and birding the surrounding pines) for another day.

Dive-bombed by gulls

Another fine portion of our jaunt to Exit Zero was a visit to the Brigantine portion of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. Actually, it was the second visit for me, as we'd been down there during the horrid cold snap a few weeks ago.

The refuge is within the geographic range of the famous New Jersey Pinelands and accessible from the Parkway through a secret exit in a rest stop. Taking that route, you end up on Jimmy Leeds Road, eventually to Route 9 and then the refuge itself. Personally, I find any reference to the Leeds name in South Jersey to be troubling. Leeds, after all, is the Jersey Devil's last name.

Given the amount of snow on the ground on our first visit, we didn't bother with any of the foot trails, preferring to take the drive along the marsh to see the waterfowl. The way the drive is situated makes it relatively easy to bird from the car, provided you see your desired subject in enough time to stop the vehicle and roll down the window. Most of the road is on a series of berms going through the marsh; it's just wide enough to give you room to pull over and stop and still let traffic behind you get through.

Last time we were there relatively early and were able to see some pretty neat stuff, including a bittern (my catch in the grass on the side of the road) and an immature bald eagle enjoying a mid-morning snack on the ice. This time, we were a bit later in the day, closer to dusk. While the marsh had thawed quite a bit, there didn't seem to be anyone remarkable out there. The real story came from the skies.

Or, more accurately, from about 10 feet above us. As we drove along the road, we were occasionally confronted by gulls hovering with morsels in their beaks. They were on a mission: crack open the shell or whatever the morsel was in, preferably on a hard surface. Like my car. Uh, no.

Most of the time, I'd wait them out, watching them hover until they finally dropped their stuff and dived down to collect their meals. Then I'd drive past them and they'd start the process all over again. One of the gulls, though, didn't seem to be getting the drill. He just floated there on the wind, not dropping his stuff and not letting me pass. "This one obviously took the short bus to gull school," Ivan observed. Yes, perhaps.