Contact! and Ahoy! Aviation on the Hackensack River

Substantially industrialized rivers can hold a lot of secrets. Sometimes they're regrettable, in the form of pollution and blight that take decades and millions of dollars to remove. Other times, they reveal a more romantic past, with activities you can barely imagine the area could support today.

We recently got a lead on one of these stories from reader Greg Parson, who commented on our story about New Jersey Aviation Hall of Famer Ed Gorski and the Lincoln Park Airport. Among his reminiscences about Gorski and the field, he mentioned that his uncle, George Lambros, had operated a seaplane base in Little Ferry.

A seaplane base? On the Hackensack River? With our friends from Hackensack Riverkeeper, we'd cruised up the river in August, enjoying the rebirth of the Meadowlands punctuated with occasional stories of past and present commerce on the river, but I couldn't recall hearing anything about aircraft. Had I missed something?

Indeed, when I mentioned it to friends on Facebook, several confirmed that two bases were operational at the location at some point in the past 40 years. One friend even noted that she used to watch the takeoffs when she was growing up in Ridgefield.

Greg kindly got back to me with some additional information, including an address and the observation that the current Little Ferry Seaplane Base is actually across the river from the original Lambros property, which was in Ridgefield Park. The Little Ferry location had once been the home to a famed restaurant called Tracey's Nine Mile House, which apparently served an amazing sliced steak sandwich.

Depending on your perspective, this is either the Hackensack River
or Runway 01-19 of Little Ferry Seaplane Base.

With that information in hand, I took to the web for additional background. While there's not a lot of data out there on George Lambros or his operation, I did discover that the base opened in August, 1947 as an adjunct of sorts to nearby Teterboro Airport. Lambros operated an instructional school and seaplane rental out of the base, using craft like the Grumman Wigeon to certify pilots for water takeoffs and landings. Among those giving the lessons was Springfield resident Kathleen Hilbrandt, who'd received her flight instructor rating after serving in the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II.

Lambros didn't have a monopoly on that stretch of the Hackensack, with Mellor-Howard Seaplane Base operating nearby. The Hackensack Riverkeeper himself, Bill Sheehan, also informed us that another seaplane port operated farther upriver, at Carlstadt. Now the site of River Barge Park and Marina, the former Sky Harbor was also a training location for water-heading pilots during World War II.

Look for more recent information about the Little Ferry operation, and you're up for a difficult search, especially if you attempt to find the seaplane base itself. At least two owners have operated the base since Lambros, but I couldn't find the date when it moved across the river from Ridgefield Park to Little Ferry. Several sources, including the Federal Aviation Administration website, list it as an active base, with two operations reported in 2012 (I'm assuming that's one landing and one takeoff, but I could be wrong). However, when Ivan and I visited the site recently, all we could find was a closed restaurant (perhaps the successor to Tracey's), a dock that appears to have seen better days, and no evidence of aircraft whatsoever. To be fair, the area was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. Across the river, the former site of the Lambros base is occupied by a large industrial building.

Needless to say, we'll be doing a bit more research on this fascinating aspect of the Hackensack River. Meanwhile, if you're in the area and see an amphibious airplane coming in for a landing, let us know!

From enslavement to business mogul: Elizabeth Sutliff Dulfer

I love it when a Hidden New Jersey story reveals another, equally as obscure story about an accomplished individual who's somehow evaded widespread notice. Such is the case with accomplished 19th century businesswoman Elizabeth Dickerson Sutliff Dulfer.

You might remember her name from our story about the clay trade that once prospered along the Hackensack River. She was the first person to capitalize on the wide-scale commercial value of the local clay, purchasing 87 acres of land in Little Ferry for the purpose of mining and selling the substance. It's remarkable for a woman of that time to have the resources and ability to acquire land without a man's help, but it's an even more fascinating story when you consider her origins.

Elizabeth Dickerson was born into slavery in 1790, in New Barbadoes, current-day Hackensack. She worked in servitude for William and Polly Campbell at their home along the banks of the Hackensack River until achieving manumission in 1822. It's not known whether she paid for her freedom or whether it was granted for past service, but either way, she was free to enjoy the same rights as any woman who'd never been enslaved.

Census records indicate that following her release, she may have lived and worked as a seamstress in New York City, marrying a Jamaican immigrant named Alexander Sutler. Regardless of her profession, she must have managed her income wisely, for she started acquiring land on her return to New Jersey in 1847. She spent more than $1300 to purchase the Little Ferry property not far from her childhood home, aggregating tracts from several sellers. You've got to believe she had a goal in mind, as it took time, serious persistence and a strategy to negotiate the number of transactions she had to make to acquire the land.

Once she had the property together, the real work began. Mining clay was a tough, labor-intensive business in the mid 1800s, and she hired several employees to help her. As we saw in the case of the Mehrhofs, Dulfer counted on ships to transport her product to customers in the larger cities of New Jersey and beyond. Some accounts say that her business was one of the largest clay providers in the country; she was likely among the wealthiest landowners in Bergen County, too. That said, she still had to deal with the prevailing attitudes of the time: the 1850 census listed her husband as owner and farmer of the property, even though she herself held legal title to the land.

Following Alexander's death in 1855, Elizabeth remarried, this time to a Dutch immigrant 33 years her junior. John Dulfer joined his wife's business, and together they also tended the 50 acres designated to agriculture. Records show that the farm was successful as well, yielding potatoes, hay, butter and produce that Elizabeth sold at market in Hoboken and elsewhere.

Elizabeth's business and financial acumen served her well in her advancing age, when she capitalized on the potential of her considerable holdings. Selling the clay beds in 1867 for more than ten times what she'd paid for them 20 years earlier, she became a financier. Between 1864 and 1870, she invested more than $16,000 in Bergen County real estate and high-interest bearing mortgages.

Elizabeth died in 1880 at the age of 90. Buried in what's now known as Gethsemane Cemetery in Little Ferry, she seems to have fallen largely into obscurity, much like the clay industry in which she excelled. It's truly a shame: in her time, she defied the odds against women and African Americans to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs in New Jersey.

Just another brick in the marsh: finding Little Ferry's historic clay industry

You wouldn't know it by the lack of traffic in recent years, but the Hackensack River and its tributaries were once important shipping routes. Well before the invention of trucks and the establishment of major highways, schooners and barges once traveled well up the river, stopping to pick up a wide range of materials and finished goods grown or made in the Meadowlands.

Along those lines, a quiet wooded park and a man-made pond in Little Ferry are among the last vestiges of an industry that helped to build many sturdy buildings in New Jersey and New York City. And the name attached to the pond and the adjacent road recall an earlier time when a German immigrant family dominated the local brickmaking business.

I was a little surprised to discover that bricks had been such a big business in the Meadowlands. As far as I'd known, the state's clay-based industry had taken hold in Central Jersey, specifically in Woodbridge and Trenton. In fact, the Woodbridge Center mall was built in a former clay pit. I guess that I never considered what might be below the spartina grass and phragmites in Bergen and Hudson counties.

Small bodies of water like Mehrhof Pond appear to be
the last visible signs of a once-thriving brickmaking
industry in the Meadowlands.

Most of the clay business along the Hackensack was centered in Little Ferry, starting in the late 1840s. Recognizing the value of the local soil, a freed black woman, Elizabeth Sutliff Dulfer, purchased 87 acres of land there to supply clay to craftspeople in Jersey City and Newark. The first business to actually produce clay products within the town's borders was a flowerpot factory. In any case, it was the ideal place for a successful clay-based business. The raw material was right there, close to the river for shipping.

By the mid 1860s, brickmaking was well established in Little Ferry, with several facilities in operation to supply the growing cities of New York and northern New Jersey. Among others, members of the Mehrhof family purchased brickyards there, enlarging until they were among the nation's largest brick manufacturers. Producing up to two million bricks a year, they even owned a fleet of schooners to ship finished bricks to customers as far away as Providence, Rhode Island. To keep up with demand, the Mehrhof companies dug a 60-foot deep pit alongside a lowland forest near the Hackensack. Continuously-operated pumps kept the nearby river and ground water from filling the pits.

Brickmaking started to decline in the Meadowlands after World War I, with the last yard closing in the 1940s. I haven't found a specific reason why, though the overall decline of New Jersey's clay industry is attributed to rising real estate values. Apparently, the clay to be mined wasn't worth nearly as much as what developers were willing to pay for the land.

In any case, the water pumps stopped after Little Ferry's brick companies went out of business, and the pits eventually filled in with fresh water. These days the largest clay pit in Bergen County is known as Mehrhof Pond, part of Losen Slote Creek Park, one of several habitat areas managed by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. The pond itself is fenced off, presumably to prevent the curious from swimming or boating there (I'd wager that the water there is significantly deeper than just about any other place in the Meadows). That said, you can still check it out from the far end of Mehrhof Road, or from one of the park trails. Just find your way off Route 46 and down past the Little Ferry DPW. You can't miss it.

Ivan and I seem to find ourselves at Losen Slote only to experience extremes. On our first visit, the bitter-cold January wind prompted us to walk briskly through the woods in our futile search for the much-talked-about common redpolls that never appeared for us. Most recently, we thought better of tromping through the overgrown underbrush in the 90 degree plus heat and humidity. We'll have to return sometime when the temperature isn't either topping or scraping the bottom of the thermometer. I've heard it's a nice place to check out migrants on a sunny spring or fall day.