At war with the natives... or was it the New Yorkers? A mystery in Montague.

Sure, it's lightly populated now, at least by New Jersey standards, but it's hard to imagine a time when Sussex County was truly wilderness, with European settlers mixed with Minisink Indians of the Lenape tribe. It was an era when settlers built forts along the Delaware River and folks were still debating whether the land was actually in New Jersey, or in New York.

Ivan and I found vestiges of the time in question, the early 1700s, during a recent drive along Old Mine Road in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. It might have been Montague, or maybe Sandyston where we pulled off the road and onto a dirt drive to read the historic marker for the Westbrook-Bell House, the oldest surviving dwelling in Sussex County. Take a look:

An adjacent plaque from the local Daughters of the American Revolution stated that two forts had been built in the area during the French and Indian War: one about a mile to the south, and another behind the barn on the Westbrook property.

So which story was true? Had fortifications been built to protect the inhabitants during the conflict with natives and the French in the late 1750s, as the DAR claimed, or to fend off land-grabbing flintlock-toting New Yorkers, as the Sussex County Historical Commission stated?  I was more inclined to go with the French and Indian War. Sure, there were disagreements about the placement of the boundary, but I'd never heard about things getting so contentious that weapons were required to defend one's property and provenance. When it comes to borders, New Jerseyans are more likely to go to court than to battle, but I couldn't be sure. We were talking about the early days and sparsely-populated territory.

Either way, there was a house to be seen. We walked down the picturesque road, shaded by a row of stately trees, until we found the small stone Dutch Colonial house, looking very closed up but still somewhat cared for. The doors and ground-floor windows were boarded up, but a TV satellite dish stood on a pole next to the home, leaving me to wonder whether someone lives there. The DAR marker had noted that nine generations of the Bell family had made the tiny house their home. Had descendants still been there when the Federal government cleared inhabitants from the land in the 1960s, when plans were underway to build the Tocks Island Dam? (For a little more perspective on that, check out this story about neighboring Montague.) Could someone have moved back in, even if only a National Park Service employee?

Back at Hidden New Jersey headquarters, we hit the books and the internet for more information. Turns out that what's now known as the Minisink Historic District has been studied fairly extensively by the U.S. government: by the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1941 and again in 1970, and then by archaeologists before the planned flooding of the area with the dam project.

HABS dates the house circa 1725, based on documentation from the Westbrook descendants who lived there at the time of the first survey. However, the Historical Commission sign may be right about the date that Johannes Westbrook originally gained possession of the land. There's some conjecture that he might have made a deal with the natives as early as 1701 but arranged for a deed decades later in an attempt to thwart possible claims or intercession by the Jersey Proprietors. In any case, the property stayed with the family until 1959, when it was finally sold to an unrelated party.

As for the fortifications and their origin, I can't find any reference to organized disputes between the colonies that rose to the level of building defensive structures. Sure, there were violent conflicts among landowners with conflicting claims to property, and New York aggressively granted ownership of land that was actually New Jersey, but were militias raised as a result? I don't see where.

Citations pointing to the need for forts to defend Northwestern New Jersey against foes in the French and Indian Wars, however, is abundant. Blockhouse forts were built along the Delaware in 1756 as a far-forward defense against possible invasion of population centers in Newark, Elizabeth and Perth Amboy. Once the local Minisink changed their alliance to the British, the forts were largely unneeded, and were reportedly abandoned.

Old Mine Road is dotted with old structures like the Westbrook-Bell House, stone and brick laid by folks who truly set out for adventure. Our earliest history of European settlement, little-known to most New Jerseyans, stands waiting for exploration and study within the boundaries of the Water Gap. It's hard to imagine that the lot of it could have been lost to the deluge of an ill-planned dam.

Three states, one step: setting the New Jersey/New York border

North and South Carolina have Pedro and South of the Border.

New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania have a cemetery. Well, kind of. A few weeks ago, intrepid Hidden New Jersey reader Craig Walenta contacted us to share the location of the marker that shows the point where the boundaries of the three states converge, at the confluence of the Delaware and Neversink Rivers.

Naturally, we were intrigued. Longtime readers are aware of our interest in boundaries, whether they be the ones that separate East and West Jerseys, or the several disputes over our northern border with New York. Considering that of the 487 mile borderline of New Jersey, only 48 miles is on land, the state has had a remarkable amount of squabbling with our northern neighbor about acreage. (Click on the "NJ/NY border dispute" tag by the timestamp on this entry to get to a few of the stories we've written on this.) The battle over Ellis Island became so contentious that the U.S. Supreme Court was compelled to settle the longstanding disagreement, and that's actually a Federal property! Every fight is worth it: being the fourth smallest state in the Union in terms of land mass, we can use all the acreage we can get.

Ivan and I agreed we'd investigate the northwestern marker next time we were near Montague, and luckily we found ourselves at Sunrise Mountain in Stokes State Forest this past weekend. We were in pursuit of a golden eagle or two; they're not incredibly easy to find in New Jersey, so the best bet is often to head to a hawk watching site at the right time of the fall, and wait. After about 90 minutes of vultures and other assorted raptors, we were pretty well assured there'd be no goldens flying by in the near future. That's when I remembered the boundary marker. We were in the neighborhood; why not stop by?

Craig warned us that unless we wanted to take a swim, we'd have to dip into New York State to get to the destination. That, to me, made it all the more interesting. The directions were basic enough: cross into Port Jervis from Montague, make a left, cross a bridge and head into a cemetery. We soon found ourselves passing through the gates of Laurel Grove Cemetery and admiring many 19th century gravestones. How would we know a boundary marker from all of these other granite monuments?

Then, looming before us, high above, we saw two broad highway overpasses. Craig had helpfully noted that Interstate 84 skirts just north of the border between New Jersey and New York, never actually touching the Garden State. We saw a small parking area and a rectangular granite marker. This had to be the place. I jumped out of the car to inspect the stone. Yup, this is it.

Inscribed on both of the broad sides, the six-foot high marker is actually a witness stone that directs the explorer to another, smaller stone down the hill on a peninsula between the Delaware and the Neversink. That stone is meant to show the actual border and the point at which New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania meet. We scrambled down to check it out and take the obligatory photos of each other standing on the boundary as the two rivers flowed below us. After all, how many chances does one get to stand in three states at once? (Especially without paying a toll!)

A similar inscription on the other
side notes the New York
commissioners and directions to
the true border marker.

As if that wasn't enough, the visit got even better. A half mile or so up the cemetery road, our path back into Port Jervis was blocked by a small truck, a handful of people and a dog. One of the people walked over and told us an eagle was in a tree not 20 feet away, overlooking the Delaware. Sure enough, we looked, and there it was, perched and patiently tolerating our admiration. While it didn't make up for the lack of golden eagles at Sunrise, it was definitely a welcome sight.

Once back at Hidden New Jersey headquarters, I checked into the history of the marker and discovered, for one thing, that the boundary it shows isn't quite accurate. We hadn't actually made it into Pennsylvania. Had we really stepped on the point where the three states meet, we would have been several feet to the west, wading in the waters of the Delaware. Eh, close enough.

More interesting is the story why the boundary marker was placed in 1882. The original stones had been set in 1774, over a century after the Duke of York had granted New Jersey lands to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. Many of those markers had disappeared over the years, prompting State Geologist George H. Cook to seek permission to resurvey the boundary in 1872. With the blessing of the state Geological Survey Board of Managers, he sent surveyors out to find the markers and map the true line described within the Berkeley/Carteret/York agreement.

What they found was disturbing to any good Jerseyman or Jerseywoman. The straight, diagonal border line was, in fact, bowed slightly in New York's favor, presumably because the original surveyors' instruments were affected by the heavy iron ore content of the Sussex and Passaic Highlands. In all, New York was enjoying about 10 acres of what was supposed to be New Jersey. Cook dutifully recommended to the Survey Board and Governor Joel Parker, "Some joint action should be had... by which the line could be straightened, and made to accord with its original definitions and descriptions."

It was time to bring in the lawyers. Prominent Newark attorney Thomas McCarter and former Attorney General Abraham Browning joined Cook as border commissioners for New Jersey; their New York counterparts included Congressman Elias Leavenworth, former State Senator Henry Pierson and New York Central Railroad counsel Chauncey Depew. Though the New Jerseyans strongly recommended redrawing the line according to the Duke of York's original decree, New York balked, and the two states' legislatures agreed to maintain the 1774 boundary markers. Accordingly, in 1882 terminal markers were placed at Port Jervis to the west and at the Palisades near the Hudson to the east, with additional markers placed at one mile intervals in between.

One could say that New Jersey got more than its 10 acres back when about 24 acres of Ellis Island was deemed part of the Garden State in 1998, but there's still something vaguely dissatisfying about the whole thing. What do you say, folks? Wanna go for a land grab?

Drawing the line in Rockleigh

I love a good border dispute, and New Jersey has had its share. The most recent reached the U.S. Supreme Court, when New Jersey won bragging rights to a portion of Ellis Island in 1998. A hundred and thirty years earlier, the state of New York basically appropriated a tract of oyster bed on our side of Raritan Bay and gave it to the federal government for the construction of Great Beds Lighthouse.

Then there's Rockleigh, the tiny Bergen County village. It's so close to the border that some might think it's actually in New York, and for a time many years ago, it was.

Where the Ellis Island and Great Beds issues might be perceived by Jerseyphiles as yet another example of our larger neighbor throwing its weight around, the Rockleigh story is based in bad mapping. We're talking about the 1600s here, an age where surveying equipment left a lot to be desired.

When the Duke of York issued the charter for New Jersey in 1664, he was working with bad information. He declared the boundary with New York to start at latitude 41 degrees, 40 feet to the west and conclude where a southern branch of the Delaware River fed into the Hudson River. You can see the problem: nowhere do the two rivers meet.

Though settlers faced a degree of uncertainty when they applied for land patents, they came, nonetheless. London physician George Lockhart seems to have taken the safe route in his approach to owning land in the area. Having received a patent of 3800 acres from the East Jersey Proprietors in 1685, he sought further confirmation of his ownership from the Province of New York when that government claimed the tract within its jurisdiction. The guy really covered his bases, even though he never settled the land, himself.

It wasn't until 1769 that the current boundary line was settled by royal commission, frustrating both colonies. New York had wanted the land as far south as Closter, and New Jersey had claimed additional land up to Haverstraw in Rockland County.

Either way, Rockleigh's status was settled: it was in New Jersey to stay, first as part of now-dissolved Harrington Township and eventually as part of Northvale. As was once the fashion among certain communities in the state, residents seceded in 1923 over a dispute with the larger township (this one over water lines) and formed their own borough.

The community proudly preserves its historical district, which includes several 18th and 19th century homes, many of Dutch architecture. In all, Rockleigh's population is just over 500, living in fewer than 70 homes, each standing on at least two acres of land. It seems that the town has remained true to the description it provided to the National Register of Historic Places: "represent[ing] a way of life which appears to have disappeared from the New Jersey culture: an area settled by a small number of families, enlarged by family intermarriages and an occasional local settlers and stabilized by the mid-19th century."

Straddling the Jerseys on Province Line Road

Drive around Mercer County near Princeton, and there's a chance you'll come across Province Line Road. Since you'd be comfortably inland from the state boundaries of the Delaware River and the Atlantic Ocean, you'd be excused for wondering how that name came about. The road certainly isn't marking any contemporary boundary, so what's the deal?

I discovered the cause during a recent wandering on County Route 518. Transfixed by the pastoral scenery, I saw the street sign for Province Line and took a turn to see where it would take me. Rounding the corner, I noticed this on my side of the intersection:

To save your eyes a bit of strain, I'll give you the synopsis. When the English took control of the New York/New Jersey area in 1664, the Duke of York gave New Jersey to two lords, Carteret and Berkeley, who probably never even set foot in the New World. The two then designated local representatives to sell portions of their shares to people who actually lived here, who became known as proprietors. (I shared a little of this in an entry about our visit to Perth Amboy last year.)

Look at the map on the plaque, and you'll see a dotted line above Three Bridges. That's where the fun starts. Naturally, when land is conveyed to new owners, boundaries are decided upon, but when it came to East and West Jersey, the process wasn't as simple as a brief discussion over a map. The Duke had divided the east and west provinces with a diagonal line reaching from Little Egg Harbor on the Atlantic to the spot where New Jersey and New York meet on the Delaware River. Sounds easy, right? It would have been, but that border wasn't officially settled until 1769. You can see the problem.

East-west lines were drawn in 1687 and 1719, but the one that stuck was plotted in 1743 by John Lawrence, now marked by Province Line Road near the plaque I found. Nonetheless, the proprietors of continued to squabble over the boundary for another 140 years. These guys really took their jobs seriously, even after their work ceased to have much relevance from a property-deeding perspective. They could learn a lesson from Steve Chernoski, the documentarian who's tackled the mystery of the line between North and South Jersey. Drive around a bit, ask the locals which side they identify with more, and decide by acclaim.

I read a few years ago that a group of surveyors were using GPS instruments to determine the straightness of Lawrence's line. If they drove the same stretch of Province Line Road that I did, they'd be pretty impressed. Check out how straight it is:

I wish I could report that the full length of the road is as pin-straight and travels clear to Little Egg Harbor, but it's not and it doesn't. About a mile away from where I took this photo, I ran into a dead end and had to resort to an intersecting street. Looking at the map when I got home, I discovered the road makes some twists and turns before terminating near a shopping mall.

Wanna buy a lighthouse? We'll throw in the oystercatchers for free.

A sage person once asked me: if a seagull flies over the bay, does that make it a bagel? That's not why we found ourselves on the shores of Raritan Bay, but it's an interesting question, nonetheless.

Following our visit to Perth Amboy, we stopped at the Raritan Bay Waterfront Park in South Amboy to tuck a bit of birding into the day. Ivan had heard that some little gulls were spotted there (and no, he didn't sing "Thank Heaven for Little Gulls"), and heck, when you have the chance to go to the beach in South Amboy, you don't pass it up.

What I didn't realize was that the beach also offers a perfect view to one of New Jersey's little known lighthouses, the Great Beds light. It's a classic 'spark plug' design, set off into the water, just where the Arthur Kill meets the bay. Its name is derived from the great beds of oysters which once dominated the bay floor, straddling the watery New Jersey/New York borderline. In 1868, New York ceded the underwater land on which to build the light, ultimately setting off yet another boundary squabble. It seems that the Empire State had granted the federal government a nice piece of the Garden State. Today that doesn't seem like much of an issue, but back then, when shellfish were still being harvested there, it caused quite a stir. Eventually, the dispute was settled in New Jersey's favor, and the light was built. First painted red, then brown and finally white, it was hit by passing barges and other craft at least 10 times in the early 1900s.

Unmanned since 1945, Great Beds is now run by automation, meaning that it rarely, if ever, gets human visitors. The light was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, which, unfortunately, doesn't mean it will be protected. In fact, the Coast Guard has declared it excess to its needs and offered it to other federal agencies and educational concerns, among others, but found no takers. The General Services Administration put it up for auction just a few weeks ago, so its fate is now up in the air. If you've got at least $10,000 and a boat and want a little solitude, it might be a pretty nice weekend place, though I have no idea what condition the living quarters are in. The outhouse, for example, was taken out many years ago.

An oystercatcher takes flight.

As for the birds, there apparently were no little gulls to be seen, though Ivan did pick up a few Bonaparte's gulls as he scanned the usual suspects on the water. I was particularly taken by a pair of American oystercatchers who were foraging around the shallow waters at the edge of the beach. Between their dark orange beaks and reddish circles around their eyes, they're quite an interesting sight, especially when contrasted with the monochromatic plumage of the surrounding gulls.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I also noticed quite a number of good-sized oyster shells on the beach. As recently as last year, experimental seed oysters were placed in the bay, but they were removed on order of the state Department of Environmental Protection, the rationale being that poachers would steal and sell the oysters, which were alleged to be tainted with harmful bacteria. While the Raritan is still recovering from years of pollution and neglect, it's a good sign that shellfish are starting to thrive, and hopefully new beds will be established in coming years.

Ellis Island: The Jersey side (no fooling!)

Though Ellis Island is right in the middle of New York Harbor and hosts more than two million visitors a year, it qualifies as a hidden New Jersey story.

That's not an April Fools joke -- the Island of Hope and Tears has a legitimate Garden State connection. Few people know that Ellis Island is in two states: New York and New Jersey.

Both Ellis Island and Liberty Island are on the New Jersey side of the state boundary that tracks down the Hudson River and through New York Harbor. Way back in 1834, the states entered into a compact that put the islands under New York jurisdiction, and both states agreed that the surrounding waters were New Jersey territory. In any case, the islands are federal property and were hosts to forts defending the harbor before becoming home to the Statue of Liberty and the immigration station.

Over the years, as immigration boomed and more space was needed for medical facilities to handle thousands of sick newcomers, the US government enlarged Ellis Island and built more than 30 buildings there. What was once about 3.5 acres became 27.5, consisting of fill taken from Manhattan and Brooklyn during the excavation of the New York City subway system.

Not much was said about Ellis Island's provenance until the immigration station was restored and opened as a museum in 1990. In stark contrast, the many buildings on the island's south side remained in disarray, and questions came up about what would come of them. Would they be torn down in favor of new construction, perhaps a shiny new hotel or casino? Given that the island is just a half mile from Jersey City, the state of New Jersey wanted a strong voice in any decision about the island's future. And certainly, monetary issues came into play, too. As it stood, visitors paid New York sales tax on anything they bought at the souvenir stands and snack bars on Ellis and Liberty Islands. Who would get the tax revenue from any additional profit making enterprises on the island?

One of the Ellis Island hospital buildings,
on the New Jersey side of the island.

The issue was settled in the time honored American tradition: a law suit that reached the US Supreme Court. In their infinite wisdom, the Justices looked back to the 1834 compact for guidance. Noting that the states had agreed that the naturally-occurring islands were New York land in New Jersey territory, they carefully drew the state boundary to include the original land within the larger, man-made landmass we know today. While the vast majority of the immigration museum rests within the footprint of the original island, tiny bits rest within New Jersey. And more than 80 percent of the total island, including the entire south side hospital complex, is part of the Garden State.

And the status of the south side buildings? Of course, as always, we get the fixer-upper. The non-profit Save Ellis Island is working with the National Park Service to raise funds for restoration of the hospital complex, with an eye toward opening an institute on world migration and health. All of the buildings are stabilized to prevent further decay, and one, the Ferry Building, is already open for guided tours.

I'm a volunteer docent for the Park Service and SEI, so I've made more than a couple of trips to the south side of the island. I've also done dozens of tours to the Ferry Building to talk with visitors about the Ellis Island Hospital.  More on that to come...