Discovering more of the Morris Canal at Montville

Since we visited the Jim and Mary Lee Museum of the Morris Canal in Stewartsville back in April, I've been wondering where other, more hidden remnants of the canal's unique technology might be hiding. We may have found at least a little of it.

If you're not a frequent Hidden New Jersey reader or a canal enthusiast, the prospect of finding indications of century-old transportation infrastructure might not seem all that exciting, but bear with me, or take a quick read of the original story. We're talking about an important part of a system that helped drive northern New Jersey's economy in the late 19th century, left to rot until the curiosity of one man revealed it decades later.

In a nutshell, the canal's 23 inclined planes were ingenious machinery that used the power of the canal's own water to lift boats onto cable carts that drew them up or down sizeable hills where ordinary canal locks wouldn't have been practical or maybe even possible. This technology allowed planners to build the canal across some of the hilliest parts of the state, rising and falling more than 1600 feet over a 102 mile route. Coal and other products could then be shipped economically along the canal from Phillipsburg to Jersey City and the New York markets beyond.

Little of the Morris Canal is visible today, but for the occasional brown historic signs that mark its path through Warren, Morris and Passaic Counties. Once the canal went bust in 1924, the State of New Jersey filled in much of the waterway that wasn't appropriated for other purposes like the Newark City Subway. The flumes and towers built to power the plane mechanisms were demolished, their remains tossed into the shafts and tunnels (tailrace and penstock) that once directed water through turbines. Decades later, Lee excavated the plane near Stewartsville, eventually building a fascinating museum and allowing visitors an up-close look at the tunnels where the power was generated.

After learning about the plane technology from Jim Lee's descendents, we've taken note of a few of the locations where brown roadside markers note the former presence of the planes. One of the locations is now marked by a welcome sign to the Morris Canal Greenway in Montville. The site hasn't been excavated, nor is there a canal museum nearby. However, it's a heck of a lot more accessible to the average person, just a short drive from Route 287 on U.S. 202.

Ivan recently drove past and noticed that the sign had been put up at the start of a narrow road that juts off of 202 near a couple of curves in the meandering highway. In that part of the state, 202 winds quite a bit, and at that particular juncture, enough older buildings are clustered to lead you to believe that it had been a town center of sorts many years ago. We parked in a lot next to a small office building and walked up the street to view the plane.

Our lessons from the Stewartsville visit served us well: we quickly recognized the boundaries of the inclined plane, well marked with broad and thick paving stones at the edges. Though sturdy trees now grow where cradle carts once drew canal boats up the hill, we could easily envision how the whole thing worked. I was tempted to kick up some topsoil to see if any of the thick wire cables remained around the property, but there appeared to be no metal remains of the machinery left around. As I learned once we got back to Hidden New Jersey headquarters, members of the Montville Historical Society, the town's Department of Public Works and the Canal Society of New Jersey had worked for two years to clear the area of trash and illegal dumping before the park was dedicated last year. Eagle Scout candidates followed up by constructing a welcome sign and mulching the path to allow visitors to enjoy the park.

For visitors less familiar with the canal and its workings, informative historic markers at the bottom and top of the plane, explain the technology and the impact on the Montville community. Photos on one of them show a built-up commercial area where the undulating terrain forced the canal to cross the path of 202 not once but twice in about a tenth of a mile. The plane we'd discovered, it turns out, was one of two that were built in town to accommodate the canal's hilly path there. This one alone elevated canal boats more than 70 feet in altitude in just a matter of yards.

The Montville Canal Park doesn't have obvious borders or parking, and several houses are nearby, so if you stop by to visit, be sure not to wander too far afield. That said, I couldn't help but wonder whether any of the neighbors have considered taking Jim Lee's lead. To my knowledge, nobody's tried to excavate the powerhouse shaft or the tailrace tunnel that once let water back out to the lower canal. What an adventure that would be!

For Halloween, some of our favorite haunts

It's Halloween, and New Jersey-based websites are having a field day with posts citing the state's top scary and haunted places. If you're into old graveyards or things that go bump in the night, there are plenty of places where you can satisfy your itch to get a good fright.

At Hidden New Jersey, we generally don't cover the mysterious, spooky and altogether ooky places that are well known to many explorers, but the spirit of the day got me thinking. Of all the places we've been, which ones do I wish were haunted? Or perhaps more accurately, which ones have stories so interesting I'd like the chance to commune with the people who once lived or worked there?

Here are a few I'd like to revisit, this time with a Ouija board or trusty medium:

Site of the explosion

The site of the Kingsland explosion: It was 1917. The United States was on the brink of entering World War I, and Lyndhurst's Canadian Car and Foundry plant was manufacturing munitions for American allies. Saboteurs were afoot, and Tessie McNamara's quick actions were the factor between life and death for her 1700 coworkers as explosions tore the factory apart. Everyone got out safely, but the saboteurs were reportedly never found. Did they go up with the blast?

The seafaring community of Mauricetown: This now-quiet town once was home to what was probably the largest number of sea captains per square acre. I'd love to hear what one of those captains saw on his many journeys to foreign lands, long before airplanes made the world much smaller. What exotic places did he see? What did he think of the native people he met?

Along the Morris Canal

The Morris Canal: whether it's the excavated remains of an ingenious inclined plane, landlocked port towns in Warren County or the canal bed that's been repurposed as the Newark City Subway, this long-dormant technological marvel has tons of stories to tell. A cooperative spirit, say of a mule tender or barge captain, might have a few words to spout about the canal's now derelict state.

The Delaware Bay lighthouses: More than one old lighthouse has a tragic story of a lonely, suicidal keeper living a solitary life miles from shore. To my knowledge, none of the Delaware Bay lights in New Jersey waters have such a tale to tell, but I'd still like to chat with one of the early keepers at Ship John Shoal, Miah Maull or Cross Ledge Light.

Gloucester City's Immigration Station

The Gloucester City Immigration Station: It was first Philadelphia's Ellis Island, then part of a Coast Guard base, then abandoned and now an office building. What were the hopes, dreams and fears of those who were detained here? Where did they ultimately end up?

Earl R. Erdner's warehouses in Woodstown: Simple, sage wisdom is right there on the outside walls, ripe for the reading. I'd love to know if the long-dead Mr. Erdner has any more advice for us from the great beyond.

Alexander Hamilton's room at Liberty Hall: While still a young student, America's first Treasury Secretary was the guest of Governor William Livingston's family in what's now Union Township. He already held ambitions for greater things and was building friendships that would serve him well throughout his career. What was going on in his teenaged mind?

Whatever you end up doing to commemorate All Hallows Eve, have fun! And if you happen to run into the Jersey Devil, give him our regards.

A variety store of history: the King Homestead in Ledgewood

Our visit to Ledgewood's historic King Store opened our eyes to the retail world of a small community along the Morris Canal in the 19th-early 20th century timeframe. A walk next door to Theodore King's Queen Anne/vernacular style homestead led us to an experience which, if it were a shopping destination, would be a mall with surprisingly varied stores. I expected it would give us a view into the merchant class, much as the store had represented the community and transient customers, but the mix of exhibits led me to think about a lot more than that.

This view of the King family home shows the front porch
to the right, side porch to the left, with Mr. King's office at center,
probably added on after the house was built.

One of the things I love about local house museums is the stories they tell through the hodgepodge of artifacts they display, and the King homestead is no exception. The buildings themselves are sometimes the only place where small historical societies can show their diverse collections or share what's remarkable about the community. From their perspective, I'd gather the arrangement is often a blessing because they don't have the resources or sufficient artifacts to interpret an entire house for one given era. In my eyes, museums like these are one-stop wonders where I can learn what local residents find most remarkable about their own communities.

The King homestead is kind of like that. Built in the mid 1880s with the proceeds of the entrepreneur's many businesses, it now serves two purposes. Walk up across the broad, inviting porch and into the house, and you can turn to the left to learn about the King family and their life there, or check out the rooms on the right for a view into the history of the Roxbury area. Or both.

Heading to the left, we were greeted by Roxbury Historic Trust President Miriam Morris, who led us through the house, narrating its history and the Trust's efforts to bring it back to its former glory. The Roxbury Rotary stabilized the home after they finished work on the King Store, upgrading utilities and fixing the chimney before turning the property over to the Trust. As you walk around, you see places where more work needs to be done, but the overall impression is of visiting a very much lived-in older relative's home, complete with vintage and antique furniture.

Theodore King's small office stands just off a corner of the parlor, ready to receive business, but the home feels more like the dominion of his daughter Emma Louise, the last of the family to live there. There's even a collection of Depression glass laid out on the dining room table, a temporary exhibit that underscores another facet of life in the community over the years.

The dining room offers a pleasant surprise: a wrap-around mural of a pastoral scene, with lovely trees and some grazing cattle. Painted by British artist James W. Marland in 1935, it may include elements of the scenery that once surrounded the house, though it's more reminiscent of English countryside. Not much is known about the artist, who first arrived in the United States in the early 1900s and seems to have settled in Morristown and Budd Lake several years later, returning to England just before his death in 1972. As part of its research on Marland, the Trust is looking for additional surviving examples of his work in the area. Miriam mentioned that he'd done some additional work in the bathroom and had stencilled the upper walls of one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Heading to the other side of the house, we got another surprise. A full room contains an exhibit inspired by the Minisink Trail, the Lenape thoroughfare that predates Main Street, the road on which the house and store now stand. As one of the signatories of the 2010 Treaty of Renewed Friendship with the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania, the Trust is committed to sharing the tribe's history and relationship with the region. In particular, the room's exhibit covers the forced departure of much of the Lenape population from New Jersey and the re-emergence of the community despite the common belief that no natives live here.

Closer to the front of the house, the rest of the Ledgewood/Roxbury area gets its due through the "Heels, Wheels and Keels" room. Drawn on the walls is a representation of the transportation routes through the area: the Minisink Trail, early 19th century turnpikes, the Morris Canal and current-day highways. Reflecting the "innovation" portion of the theme for New Jersey's 350th anniversary, a temporary exhibit highlights the inventions and technology developed in the area and by local residents, a good part of it from AT&T and Bell Labs.

Like the King Store, the homestead is open only once a month, on the second Sunday afternoon of the month from April through December. It's well worth a visit, not just as a symbol of how New Jerseyans lived and worked, but as a great example of the classic community museum. Stop by and tell them Hidden New Jersey sent you!

A time capsule view into the past: Ledgewood's King Store

Morris County's old Ledgewood Circle is no more, but if you follow a couple of small brown directional signs to the Drakesville Historic District, you'll find one of the earliest remnants of what made this crossroads the focus of a rural community from the heyday of the Morris Canal until the early 1900s.

Just off the intersection of Routes 10 and 46, the Roxbury Historic Trust is in the process of restoring the King Store and Homestead. Hidden New Jersey friend Kelly Palazzi suggested we check it out, but it wasn't easy: the property is open only on the second Sunday of the month and is closed entirely from January through March.

It's easy to imagine a few neighbors trading news
on the porch of the old King Store.

Our welcome to the King Store was probably a lot like the one a canal boat crew would have gotten in the 1800s: the proprietors were standing in the doorway of the stone building and called out a greeting as we pulled up. Walking onto the porch and into the store was like stepping back in time: the interior was lined with wooden shelves, groceries and sundries of a previous age stocked here and there. A cast-iron stove stands in the center of the room, just in front of a large scale, and a tall set of cubby holes near the door sufficed as the community's post office. In the back room, the wooden doors of a large icebox are open to help visitors imagine how milk and other perishables were kept fresh in the days before refrigeration.

Our friendly guides explained that the store was built around 1826 on what was then the Essex-Morris-Sussex Turnpike, one of the first roads chartered by the New Jersey Legislature at the start of the 19th century. The original owners, the Woodruff family, operated the store until 1835 before closing it for unknown reasons. Two years later, canal boat owner Albert Riggs bought the property and reopened it to serve the local community and the increasing traffic through the nearby Morris Canal lock and two planes. Riggs transferred ownership and operation of the store to his son-in-law Theodore King in 1873, and the new storekeeper and his wife Emma moved into the living quarters above the mercantile.

Brands of the past find their homes on the King Store shelves.

Though competition from the railroads was already digging into the canal's business, King was on his way to prosperity. Besides the popular general store, he got into the mining business and bought significant tracts of land, some of which he sold at a handsome profit while retaining the rest as vacation rental space. He also operated hotels and a steamboat company to cater to the tourist trade at nearby Lake Hopatcong. The proceeds from all of these businesses enabled him to build a comfortable Victorian home on the lot next to the store, where he could keep an eye on business while enjoying time with his wife and their daughter, Emma Louise.

King died in 1926, and with him the store. His daughter simply locked the door, leaving the goods sitting on the shelves. Dwindling traffic on Canal had ended with its termination a few years before. According to our guide, family members would come in from time to time to take items they fancied, but for the most part, the building was a de facto time capsule. Louise King divided her time between New Jersey and Florida until her death in 1975.

Fresh milk, anyone?

A few years later, the Roxbury Rotary Club took on the store as a civic project, clearing the overgrown, weeded lot and acquiring state Green Acres funding to buy the property for the township. Now the responsibility of the Roxbury Historic Trust, the King Store is slowly being restored; a new slate roof is the latest improvement, along with a refurbished scale sitting next to the porch.

While work clearly needs to be done to stabilize the structure to prevent further decay, there's much to be said for keeping a good part of the current look. Too much paint and varnish would take away the character of a classic general store. As it stands, it doesn't take much to imagine a local farmer or canal mule tender at the counter, ordering supplies and settling his bill.

The next stop on our visit to historic Drakestown was the King house, just next door... but that's a story for our next installment.

Barges, Edison and local history at the Bread Lock

After our visit to the incredible restoration of Morris Canal Inclined Plane 9W, I wondered whether we had enough energy left for a stop at a related site, Bread Lock Park and the museum that's on the grounds. It's open but once a month, like the Inclined Plane, so it only seemed right to check it out while we were in the neighborhood. It's just down Route 57, in the town of New Village, and I'd originally found it during my quest to find Edison's Portland cement factory.

One end of the life-sized model of a Morris Canal barge.

The park itself is part of the growing Morris Canal Greenway that's being developed under the auspices of the Warren County Morris Canal Committee. Appropriately, the canal prism (the trench the barges traveled in) and tow path curl their way through the property, which also includes a fitness path and picnic area. You can't visit the lock itself -- it's still buried -- but the park has its own delight. A full-sized replica of a canal barge sits near the foundation of the lock-tender's house, accessible enough that you can climb aboard and take the tiller to guide the boat on an imaginary trip. A store that once stood nearby was well known for its baked goods, to the point where canal workers renamed Lock 7 West for the aroma of delicious bread that welcomed them as they approached.

Then there's the museum. Officially the Warren County Historical Learning Center, it's in a ranch-style house, which gives the visitor a little bit of a surreal feeling upon arrival. Signs clearly state the building's purpose, but you still can't help but wonder if you'll be interrupting someone's afternoon by walking in. Frankly, I couldn't help but look for a doorbell.

When you walk in, it's abundantly clear you're either in a museum or someone's ambitious history project. The first room is lined with vintage photos of various historic sites around the county, but the most arresting sight is a linear representation of the canal and the community that surrounds its remnants today. A topographical map of the route through Warren County is posted above a diorama that takes up all of one wall of the room, along with photos of key locations. All of a sudden, the twists and turns of the canal made sense to me. What looks like a drunken cow path on a road map becomes a logical route when elevation changes are included in the equation. In other words, when most of the terrain you have to cover is blocked by hills and valleys, sometimes the most direct route has plenty of curves.

The big map also helped put a lot of things from my earlier visit to Warren County into perspective. For instance, the oddly-named Halfway House Road marks a halfway point along a seven-mile long level stretch of the canal that skims along the side of Scott's Mountain.

Visitors to the Bread Lock Museum can learn a lot about the canal, but there's plenty else about Warren County's history, too. Other rooms tell the story of Shippen Manor and Oxford Furnace (to be covered in a future Hidden New Jersey road trip), but a large photo of Thomas Edison grabbed my attention and pulled me forward, much like the aroma of fresh bread.

Through the use of several panels that lift and retract, the Edison exhibit tells the story of the Portland cement factory at New Village, including the origins of the crushing technology at the Ogdensburg iron mine and the large limestone mining pits nearby that provided crucial ingredients for the cement. Our museum guide also shared the story of a factory employee who ingeniously built his own concrete house near the corner of Route 57 and Edison Road. Rather than employing one of Edison's house molds (as was used to build the Valley View development in Phillipsburg), the man cast blocks from concrete dust he swept up around the plant. He and his family made about 2000 bricks, enough to construct a nice little home at an even lower cost than Edison boasted for the poured concrete homes.

Honestly, we got so caught up in the Edison exhibit (our guide really knew his stuff) that we didn't get the chance to see the rest of the museum rooms before we had to be on our way. We left, though, with the realization that there's a lot more to check out in Warren County than we realized.

Inclined to love the Morris Canal: technology and archaeology at the Jim and Mary Lee Museum

It's not often my mind gets blown on a Hidden New Jersey jaunt. We see a lot of wonderful things and meet many interesting people in our travels, but it's rare that a visit to one place gets me so excited that I don't know where to start the story. This is one of those instances.

It started a couple of weeks ago, when I traveled Route 57 through Warren County to find remnants of the old Morris Canal. Once-busy port towns revealed small pieces of their past, while a wrong turn outside of Montana brought me to a lonely stretch of the canal hidden in the woods of Scott's Mountain. As interesting as it all was, something was missing: the actual mechanical workings of the canal. Without that, you're just looking at a series of long ditches. Yeah, they're historical, but they show no indication of why the Morris Canal was such a big deal.

And it was a big deal, and still is now, 90 years after it went out of business. You see, to traverse its 102 mile run across north-central New Jersey, the Morris Canal had to surmount a total altitude change of 1674 feet (760 feet up from Phillipsburg to Lake Hopatcong, and then down 914 feet from the Lake to Jersey City). Canals generally use locks to float watercraft to a higher altitude or down to a lower one, as the Delaware and Raritan Canal did to overcome its 55 foot altitude change.

Having to manage a lot of height in a relatively short range, the engineers designing the Morris had to come up with something much different. Sure, they built locks to handle the smaller elevation rises, but the really pronounced peaks and valleys were addressed with a system of inclined planes that made the Morris a technological marvel for its time.

Plane 9W is just 4.5 miles from the canal's start in Phillipsburg.

The inclined plane is essentially a big ramp with machinery that pulls the canal boat up or down a ramp and deposits it back in the canal at the other end. To start, the boat would be floated onto a cradle car that acted as a little train, hauled on tracks by steel cable wound through a pulley system. The whole thing was powered by water shunted from the canal, through an elevated flume, into a powerhouse and down a 47-foot tall chute to a large turbine. Leaving by way of an underground tail race, the water would be returned to the canal, so nothing was lost.

Each inclined plane (and there were 23 of them over the route of the canal) did the work of the many locks that would be needed to make up for that degree of altitude change. The vast majority are gone now, some having been paved over as roads like Plane Street in Boonton.

Plane 9W's reaction-type or "Scotch" turbine was designated
a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1979.

The technology would have been left for history texts had it not been for a man named Jim Lee. Just after World War II, he bought the Stewartsville property on which plane 9W had stood, including the plane tender's house and remnants of the sleeper stones and cable which had been part of the site's apparatus. While the 100 foot tall incline was still there, the wooden flume and powerhouse had been demolished by the State, and much of the debris was tossed into the underground shafts, burying the turbine.

Jim, his family and friends set to work excavating the workings over the course of many years, clearing out the turbine chamber and finding scores of artifacts. In the process, Jim became the foremost expert on the Morris Canal, welcoming visitors to check out the old plane and turbine room. Though he died in 2007, his family continues to share the story on the property, which is now a Warren County park. They make special arrangements for school groups and the like, but it's open to the general public only seven times a year, on the second Sunday of the month, from April to October.

The 5.5 foot circumference tailrace took water from the turbine
back out to the canal at the lower end of the plane.

There's so much that makes the site cool that I barely know where to start. First off, it's absolutely mind blowing to consider the love and dedication behind Jim's work to unearth and share the story of Plane 9W and the Morris Canal. It's a huge testament to what a motivated history lover can do if he or she puts energy and persistence into gear. For someone to rescue a historic site on his own initiative, and then open it to others -- well, that takes a special person.

Next, there's the interpretation of the site. We were fortunate to get a tour from Jim's grandson, Jim Lee III, who's an industrial archaeologist when he's not educating people about the canal. First sharing the history and rationale for building the canal (a story for a future Hidden New Jersey entry), he led us through the technology behind the inclined plane in a way that revealed the ingenuity behind the designers' solution to a tough problem. Even if you're mechanically challenged, you'll come away with a clear understanding and a huge respect for the canal's builders.

A portion of the steel tow cable.

And finally, there's the ground you cover during the tour. Jim brought us through the stone-lined tailrace tunnel to see the turbine underground that powered the plane's tow rope, and then to the top of the plane to inspect the sleeper stones that once acted as a bed for the cradle car rails. Remnants of the steel tow cable snake through the grass, rusted but still looking very strong. At every stop along the way, Jim gave us insights about life on the canal and its impact on the communities it traveled through.

The last stop on the tour is the Jim and Mary Lee Museum, a room within the plane tender's house. While plenty of artifacts and photos are on display, I have to say my favorite was the conch that once belonged to Mary Lee's grandfather, who was one of her many relatives to work on the canal. Sea snail shells may seem out of place in western New Jersey, but they were a common sight along the Morris. Barge crew would sound the conch's trombone-like note to alert lock and plane tenders of their imminent arrival. As Jim demonstrated, they make quite a commanding sound when you blow into one end.

As an appreciator of all things innovative in New Jersey, I found it heartening to see how many people stopped by to visit Plane 9 and the museum during the hour or so that we were there. Such an important site, interpreted so well, deserves a large audience. If you'd like to visit or arrange a tour for a group, check out the Morris Canal website for more information.

The landlocked ports of Warren County

If you've driven along Route 57 in Warren County, you may have noticed some curious names on road signs. Within the larger towns are a few hamlets whose names start with the word "Port": Port Colden, Port Warren, Port Murray. While the Musconetcong River flows not far away on the border with Hunterdon County, it's not nearly sizable enough to support heavy traffic, and certainly not three ports, let alone one.

And, well, none of these communities are actually on the Musconetcong. So why the name?

Each of the communities owes its existence to the Morris Canal, the engineering marvel built in 1824 to connect Phillipsburg and Jersey City to transport Pennsylvania coal east and New York merchandise west. The canal itself should be the subject of a future Hidden New Jersey account (which Ivan keeps threatening to write), but for the sake of today's story, let's just say that since its abandonment in 1924, much of the route of the Morris has been obliterated. Portions in Newark and Jersey City have been transformed to other transportation uses, but as for the rest, with the exception of small portions here and there, you'd need a map.

Not pentagonal, but a Morris Canal
marker, nonetheless.

In certain parts of Morris and Warren Counties, you can't miss the occasional brown pentagonal sign marking the route. It seems to cross some roads so often you question the sobriety of the original planners. Without the signs, though, only a trained eye would be able to identify the brush-lined depressions as the bed of the old canal.

“Port” towns grew at some of the canal locks or planes where mechanical devices helped barges adjust to the inevitable ups and downs of the North Jersey terrain. Named for executives of the Morris Canal & Banking Company, Ports Colden and Murray were founded in the hopes they’d become boom towns as barge traffic increased.

Today, they’re not much more than enclaves of homes, some older than others. Streets named "Canal," "Lock," "Towpath" or "Plane" hint at what drove the creation of the communities, but when I visited recently, I found little left to indicate any prosperity the canal might have brought.

You’d be forgiven for missing Port Colden from Route 57. Though a sign points to the appropriate turn-off from the westbound lane, it’s easy to overlook, and the elevation of the highway obscures the most obvious structure from the road, the Port Colden Manor. Both stately and in need of some TLC, the building makes an impressive introduction to town.

Port Colden Manor, a shadow of its former grandeur.

Port Colden had apparently already suffered from the loss of the canal by the time the Federal Writers Project folks got around to visiting in the depths of the Great Depression. The WPA Guide to 1930s New Jersey describes it as "a ghost town; its few old homes and yellow hotel are a faint echo of the days when the community was a port on the now abandoned Morris Canal."

I didn’t see anyone outside as I drove around, but to call Port Colden a ghost town is a bit of a stretch. Yes, some of the older properties could use some attention, but the grade school and a newly restored community church clearly indicate that there’s life there, despite the long-ago loss of the canal. A sign just off the highway notes that the enclave is a historic district; hopefully that’s giving some impetus to bringing some attention.

Along the canal in Port Murray.

To the west, Port Murray was once considered to be the most important village in the area since it hosted both the canal and the only railroad station for miles. Today, the community seems a bit more lively than Port Colden, if just a little. Main Street boasts a couple of specialty stores as well as a post office and the municipal offices for Mansfield Township. An older building at the corner of Main Street and Towpath Road looks as if its storefront has been unused for a while but could have been a great general store and supply stop for barge crews. It was once, in fact, Perry's Store, where cargo was loaded onto and removed from barges directly from a second floor bay.

The thing that struck me about both communities was the lack of daily commerce -- places you could walk to for a gallon of milk, a dozen bagels or maybe a morning coffee. I guess it's just a matter of progress. Warren County isn't exactly McMansion central, but housing developments have sprung up over recent years, bringing big box stores and strip malls with them. Maybe the corner stores and delis have disappeared as the big Shop Rites and Walmarts have moved in and people would rather drive than walk to do their shopping. Either way, it's kind of a shame. How cool would it be to get your morning paper in the same place where canal mule tenders once bought their provisions?

Art and history below the streets of Newark

Below Newark's Raymond Boulevard and University Heights, there's a step back in time that many people outside of the city don't know is there. I recently took a few hours to check it out, and as with most of our jaunts, I found more than I expected.

First, I have to confess to being somewhat of a transit enthusiast. If you've read my tribute to Newark Airport's 1935 terminal, you already know I have a fondness for vintage places where you can get from point A to point B in some sort of conveyance. Newark Penn Station is another 1930's-era Art Deco masterpiece, and when I worked in the city, I loved my twice-daily walks through the heavily-used but little appreciated gem. 

My first trek on the City Subway was in 2001, prompted by the impending retirement of the old 1950's era trolley-like cars in favor of 21st century light rail. NJ Transit opened the system up one night, giving free rides to all comers who wanted a last dose of nostalgia. Yup, it was me and a bunch of foamers -- do I know how to have fun on a Friday night, or what? Despite the fact that the old cars were painted in bright NJ Transit colors, the whole experience was a throwback. It wasn't hard to imagine the times when Public Service Transport operated surface trolleys, and commuters from Bloomfield and the 'Newark suburbs' counted on the City Subway to get to their jobs at New Jersey Bell or an afternoon of shopping at Bambergers.

The Newark City Subway runs on the former bed of the Morris Canal, which originally ran through the city on its route between Phillipsburg and Jersey City. Abandoned by 1924, the canal had become a mosquito-infested trough and a barrier to the flow of increasing downtown traffic. Where barges had once transported the products of Newark's factories to points west, trains would now move people underground, allowing motor traffic on the new Raymond Boulevard above. Public Service had already built an extensive transit center on Park Place, providing a convenient transfer point to trolleys and buses going virtually anywhere in the state. Subway construction began in 1929 and was completed in 1935, with an extension to Penn Station finished a few years later. Beyond the Warren Street station that serves Rutgers and NJIT, the line goes to surface, making one grade crossing and hugging the edge of Branch Brook Park before terminating at Grove Street in Bloomfield.

As was the case with many major public works during the Great Depression, WPA artists made their mark on the City Subway. The line's four underground stations are graced with tile murals created by Newark native Domenico Mortellito, who'd grown up not far from the Morris Canal. Each depicts one of his childhood memories of the waterway, except for the Penn Station murals, which portray the transformation from barge to railway, complete with steam shovels and laborers moving iron beams into place. Together, the 10 murals represent the first instance of public art used in an underground transit system. Yup... you've got it: another New Jersey first.

I wasn't just there for the vintage stuff: there's more contemporary art to be found, too. As you enter the system at Penn Station, you're met by life-sized bronze commuters sculpted by Russian-born Jersey City artist Grigory Gurevich. A metal clerk stands inside a sizeable booth, presumably offering change for the turnstiles that once marked entry below.

My personal favorites are found sitting unobtrusively at the Branch Brook Park station. Sculptor Tom Otterness pays tribute to Mortellito with white tile representations of two of the underground murals, attended to by small brass workmen. It's a whimsical memorial to an accomplished artist whose works also graced Rockefeller Center and the 1939 World's Fair, among others.

Inadvertent as it may be, NJ Transit has done a pretty good job of maintaining a vintage feel on some aspects of the underground. They've added modern signage as necessary, but they've left the old tile signs that direct riders to surface streets and other destinations. Disembark at the Military Park station, and you might see a tile pointing in the direction of the Public Service Terminal. It's been more than 30 years since that building was demolished, but the sign will still direct you toward PSE&G's headquarters location.

Oh, and one last thing: if you're going to play tourist on the City Subway, you can do it really economically. The system works on the fare ticket system, where you validate your own ticket at your entry point, rendering the ticket useful for 60 minutes. A ride from Penn Station clear out to Bloomfield takes less than half that time, so you could potentially get off at a given stop, take a quick look around the neighborhood and pop back onto the next train without having to pay another fare. As far as I can tell, it's perfectly legal.

Stuff that's not there anymore: Communipaw Cove

Go to Liberty State Park today and you’ll see the remnants of its most immediate former use. The Jersey City terminal of the Central Railroad of New Jersey stands restored against the Hudson River, its rail shed a small indication of the massive amounts of people and freight that once entered and departed the area. If you look carefully around the edges of the lawns and access roads, you’ll see another indication of previous use: the warning signs showing where nature is being allowed to remediate soil polluted by the industry that once stood there.

Aerial photographs of the area from the 1940s and 50s show a substantial number of docks where freight would be loaded onto or off ships. It was in the southernmost part of this area, at Black Tom Wharf not far from the Statue of Liberty, that an act of sabotage in 1916 helped prompt the United States to enter World War I. Move forward to the early 1970s, and this same location shows abandonment following the bankruptcy of two of the region’s largest railroads.

The area’s status as a shipping center actually began with the construction of the Morris Canal in the 1830s. Terminating at the Jersey City shore of the Hudson River, the canal brought Pennsylvania coal east and New Jersey iron west. No doubt, a fair amount of the coal ended up in New York City, as well.

The canal’s builders would have seen a much different topography than we do today. Instead of an expanse of land to the south, they’d have seen a naturally scooped-out shoreline. That was Communipaw Cove, the summer home of Native Americans before the arrival of the Dutch in the 1630s. A tidal flatlands, the area was rife with oysters, as was much of New York Harbor, making for a rather pleasant place to live.

Once the Dutch West Indies Company planted itself there, industrialization, as it was at the time, started in earnest. Settlements sprouted up in the area, including plantations powered by slave labor. Then, as now, proximity to Lower Manhattan fueled transportation: regulated ferry service was established between the island and Communipaw in 1669. Apparently Jersey City real estate was hot, even then.

But why does the cove no longer exist? Well, it comes back, in some regards, to the Morris Canal. The Lehigh Valley Railroad leased the entire thing from its developers in 1871 to gain control of the terminals at Phillipsburg and Jersey City. Founded to transport Pennsylvania coal, LVRR wanted to beef up its New Jersey capacity to get to the lucrative New York City market. The Central Railroad of New Jersey had already established a terminal at Communipaw, and LVRR’s incursion began a lengthy battle that resolved in 1887 with an agreement for both to develop a railyard at the site. That’s when the cove started getting filled in, eventually becoming a huge complex serving the New York area’s shipping needs. From there, we get to the pollution and decay largely eradicated by the development of Liberty State Park in the 1970s.

A fair amount of coastal northern New Jersey has a similar, yet less dramatic history. Naturally marshy areas were filled in and solidified as ‘progress’ marched on. We got fewer mosquitoes and more commerce, but our predecessors also erased what had been there for centuries. Liberty State Park may not be Communipaw Cove, but at least it’s a nice place for a picnic and maybe a little birding. I guess we can get some solace from that.