Digging up mystery on Province Line Road

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

Crosswicks Creek, near Ellisdale.
Where dinosaurs roamed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.