The proof is in the pudding(stone)

Virtually since we started exploring, Ivan's been extolling the virtues of a a certain type of stone that's rarely found anywhere but a small part of Northern New Jersey. Here's his account of this remarkable, rustically-beautiful rock.

When we think of hidden New Jersey, we have come to consider the historic buildings, the out-of-the-way natural areas or long departed personalities that graced, or still grace the Garden State. However, perhaps the most hidden aspect of the state is the bedrock that sits many yards below our feet as we explore the “surface” Jersey. Geologic history has literally shaped our state with much of the area north of the Raritan Bay made up of rock that dates back to a time that predated the dinosaurs, while the southern part of the state consists of sediments that were deposited long afterward.

Green Pond conglomerate in place on Green Pond Road in Rockaway

Occasionally some “buried treasure,” in the form of distinctive rock formations, finds its way to the surface as a result of erosion or modern day construction. Glaciers have also exposed some of the state’s foundation or have transported rocks from one location to another.

A famous example of these out of place rocks (known as glacial erratics) is Tripod Rock in Morris County. A frequently found glacial erratic in the Montville and Boonton area is a distictively attractive rock known as Green Pond conglomerate. It's part of a larger rock formation that stretches from the New York State Thruway southwestward all the way down to Route 80 in Morris County. Alternately, it's known as Schunemunk puddingstone after another of its locations, on New York's Schunemunk Mountain. The United States Geologic Survey website has a page dedicated to Green Pond Conglomerate so I have no problem claiming this rock formation in the name of New Jersey.

A conglomerate is a rock that consists of a matrix that has pieces or fragments of other rock (known as “clasts”) mixed in. “Puddingstone” is a more colloquial expression that refers to this uneven mixture of rocks. In the case of Green Pond Conglomerate, the matrix is a reddish purple siltstone with white quartz fragments as its clasts. What I had found out however, is that these erratics are not far from home. They originated as a formation in Green Pond, a section of Rockaway Township. The matrix consisted of a reddish silt or clay that eventually hardened into rock during the Silurian period about 420 million to 445 million years ago. There the rock sat minding its own business until about 50,000 years ago when the Wisconsin Glacier slid across what is now New Jersey to slice off chunks of our hero to deposit the fragments across northern Morris County.

Over the years, Green Pond Conglomerate has been prized for its decorative qualities and has been used to construct stone walls and other landscaping and construction features on many residential and commercial properties. However attractive it looks as part of these structures, I recently had an interest in finding it where it originated so Sue and I took a ride to Green Pond to find the mother lode. Turning off Route 23 in Newfoundland onto (what else?) Green Pond Road, we could easily see the imposing ridge of Bearfort Mountain to our west. The ridge paralleled Green Pond Road, as we traveled south, so whenever we saw a side road to our right we turned in hopes of getting closer to the ridge that must have been the source of the conglomerate. We soon found ourselves in the Green Pond, a lake community that sits on the shore of… you guessed it: Green Pond.

Luckily, we found a small dirt parking lot that serves a trailhead. A friendly homeowner was seeing to her flower garden and was happy to let us know that the conglomerate could be found in the area. Unfortunately, we weren’t dressed for hiking so we passed on a trip along the trail but we could see a characteristic color to the ridge in that area. Even better, however was when we continued south on Green Pond Road and found a large outcropping of the conglomerate evident as a result of the cut that was made to construct the road, itself. We had found the origin of the rock formation that bears the name of one of New Jersey’s own communities. It was certainly worth the drive.

If Batman had a subway, it would be in Rockaway

We've visited our share of old mine sites over the past few years. We've also stumbled on some lesser-known aspects of New Jersey's rich railroad history. We've even focused on railroads that overcame major obstacles to create a shorter path from mine to market.

But bats in a mine? Okay, that makes sense. I'm cool with bats and the great work they do in keeping the insect population down. If they're happy hanging out in an old mine, more power to 'em.

Bats in what could be considered New Jersey's first subway? Now we're talking!

Calling the Hibernia hibernaculum a subway might be stretching it a little, but not by much. I first caught wind of the Hibernia Underground Railroad when I was researching another story on Morris County's mining industry. Just on the name alone, one could be distracted into wondering it might have something to do with the abolitionist movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, but this was, literally a railroad that operated underground.

The history of mining in Morris County, of course, dates back to colonial times, with the area's iron-rich hills prompting New Jersey's status as the arsenal of the Revolution. Starting in 1722, a series of independent mines operating off the same rich iron source became known collectively as the Hibernia mines. It appears that there was enough ore for everyone to profit, and that the owners of the mines pretty much worked in harmony.

As technology improved, mining practices evolved, making it a no-brainer for companies to take advantage of steam-driven transportation to shuttle ore from the mine to the smelter and perhaps beyond. Some of the mine owners banded together in 1864 to incorporate the Hibernia Mine Railroad to transport ore from the source to the Morris Canal. We'd found evidence of this railroad in Somerset County, of all places, where its former trestle bridge was relocated first to Hillsborough and now to Raritan, where it's a footbridge in a county park.

Other mine owners at Hibernia took the idea further in 1873, digging an adit (or horizontal tunnel) through the mountainous terrain to connect all of the mines with a railroad. The new Hibernia Underground Railroad shuttled ore from about 300 feet below the peak the mountain itself, with tracks that stretched about a mile from mine to the mouth of the adit. From there, the Mine Railroad took over, making the transfer to the canal or, in later years, farther to other railroads.

By the early 1900s, some of the mines were exhausted, while iron magnate Joseph Wharton consolidated the rest under his own holdings, connecting his own railroad and effectively putting the Hibernia Mine Railroad out of business. The Underground Railroad continued to operate until about 1907, when it lost its connection to the canal. In reality, its years were numbered anyway, as the last ore was mined from Hibernia in 1916.

Disused or abandoned mines tend to be magnets for adventure seekers of all kinds, and Hibernia was no exception. Probably from the moment the mine went belly-up, locals started poking around the adit and mine shafts, eager to search the bowels of the earth or maybe just to get away from naggy parents.

Thing was, though: people weren't the only ones to satisfy their fascination with these holes in the ground. Perhaps due to human disturbance in the caves they'd normally seek out, bats found Hibernia mine, particularly the horizontal path of the railroad, to be irresistible. It's not known exactly when they started staking the tunnel out, but the first report of bat habitation was filed in 1939, with several thousand little brown bats and a smattering of eastern long-eared bats observed. In subsequent decades, researchers observed as many as 20,000 bats, leading many to declare the underground railroad tunnel and the mine as one of the largest bat hibernacula (or hibernation spot) in the nation. A bat enthusiast named John Hall studied the mine and tunnel extensively in the '60s and '70s, banding several and maintaining population counts.

Trouble was, vandals and mischief makers continued to invade the mine, despite landowners' efforts to block the entrance with haphazard barriers. For many years, advocates suggested installing a grate-style gate which would allow bats to travel freely while deterring humans, but to little effect. The land above the mine was slated for development, with large homes and a golf course planned, and the mine was seen as a huge liability. In 1989 the landowner installed an impenetrable foot-thick concrete wall at the mouth of the adit.

The Hibernia Underground Railroad: all aboard for bats,
not so much for humans. Courtesy NJ DEP.

Their usual entry point blocked, the Hibernia bats were essentially buried alive, with just a few very small openings to the outside world. Local human friends of the bats reached out to Bat Conservation International and the New Jersey Division of Fish Game and Wildlife for help, ultimately negotiating with the property owner to create a mine opening sufficient for the bats' easy transit. Through a long and winding process that persisted through successive owners and a few years, advocates finally succeeded in getting the much needed gate installed.

Even after this monumental success, the future for the Hibernia bats is uncertain. The 2010 mine census indicated that, fewer than 2000 bats hibernated there, due to the white-nose syndrome fungus that has decimated the population in several states around the country. Two years later, the wintering bat population was down to 537. Subsequent counts show somewhat of a leveling-off of the decline statewide, so perhaps there's hope that the worst of it is over. Scientists are still working to better understand the fungus, its causes and impact on bat reproduction, with hope that positive human intervention can help.

Here's hoping that the bats' prospects turn around soon. How cool would it be to watch hundreds - thousands - of bats emerging from this old mine train tunnel in the spring?

Four thousand holes in Mount Hope...

If New Jersey was the crossroads of the Revolutionary War (or the cockpit, as others have said), Morris County was the arsenal. It was no coincidence that Washington spent a fair amount of his time here: the hills were full of iron which were used to make guns and ammunition, making the area well worthy of defending.

Ivan and I braved the mosquitoes on Memorial Day to check out the Mount Hope mining area in Rockaway. I'd remembered that several years ago, a developer wanted to build a pumped storage hydro power plant in the area, capitalizing on the long shafts of a huge iron mine that had been tapped out and abandoned many years ago. Essentially, pumped storage uses two reservoir areas, one higher than the other, and connected by shafts with turbines in them. Power is created when water is released from the upper reservoir into the shafts, turning the turbines as the water flows downward. Gravity does the work. As part of the plan, the company was to restore several historic buildings, including a Revolutionary-era house and church.

Move ahead several years, and the project has yet to move forward. Approvals from several agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, were needed to enable the hydro plant to connect to the electricity grid to contribute power, and, well, you know how that kind of thing goes.

I had an address for the house on Mount Hope Road, but barely an idea of what to look for. When we saw signs for the Mount Hope Historical Park, we thought we'd found it, but instead we'd found a new adventure: a series of paths leading to a string of smallish but often deep mine holes.

After parking the car, we were on our trek into the woods. Appropriate to the humidity of the day, we ran into tons of mosquitoes along the rocky path. It didn't take long for us to find the first mine pits, also known as subsidence pits that once led to mines developed by John Jacob Faesch just before the Revolutionary war. The property had been mined for about 50 years before he'd come to it, but he's considered to be the first true developer of large-scale iron mining in the Mount Hope area. The trail map showed we weren't far from the Picatinny Arsenal run by the U.S. Government.

You can still see evidence of the stone paths that were probably used to cart the iron ore out of the mine area,  and there's some sign of a few building foundations well into the woods. That said, it's still hard to believe that the tract was mined until the late 1950's. It's amazing how quickly nature will reclaim land that man leaves fallow. While we were there, Ivan heard a host of songbirds and even spotted a neat little reddish-orange Eastern Newt eft dashing through the underbrush of leaves.

And as for the house and church, they clearly weren't to be found on this stop, at least not unless we wanted to take along walk along the power line cut. Onward...