Belco: (not) a blast from the past in the Pinelands

Acres and acres of pitch pines and other evergreens obscure the remnants of industry that once dotted the Pinelands. Land cleared for pig iron foundries and papermills in the 1800s has now been overtaken by regrowth, rendering the old factories difficult to locate. Other, more accessible abandoned industrial sites like the Estell Manor glassworks are easily visited within Atlantic County parks.

What we didn't realize on our original visit to Estell Manor was that there was a larger and more recently-built and abandoned factory community nearby. In fact, a good part of the park now stands on the grounds of the World War I era munitions manufacturing site and proving grounds known as Belco. Just outside of the former blast range, the companion factory town of Belcoville is still alive and well.

New Jersey's contributions to the war effort began well before the United States entered the conflict in April 1917, with several suppliers manufacturing ammunition for our allies. Once we were formally in the conflict, four additional factories were constructed around the state by various defense contractors, including the Bethlehem Loading Company, or Belco. Under the direction and supervision of the U.S. Army, Belco cleared about 10,000 acres of marshy pine forest along the Great Egg Harbor River to build the factory along with the nearby village of Belcoville to house more than 3000 workers and their families. An adjacent proving ground was to be the largest testing site of its kind in the world.

Storage facilities for loaded shells.
Courtesy Atlantic County Government.

War is a great motivator for rapid construction, and Belco is a case in point. Work on the factory site and village began simultaneously in early 1918, continuing non-stop, seven days a week. A subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel Company, Belco was the only ordinance contractor to supply shells from mining the iron ore through forging the steel, machining, loading and assembling the final product. The site at Estell Manor was responsible for the loading and finishing stages, requiring both factories and complex safety measures to address the highly explosive elements that employees would handle.

The self-contained plant included everything that would be needed to keep production moving, including a power generator, water works, personnel offices, machine shop, blacksmith and carpentry areas, and storage facilities including reinforced powder magazines. A barracks held 1100 soldiers who guarded the plant against potential sabotage, a threat already felt from explosions at Jersey City's Black Tom Wharf and the Canadian Car and Foundry munitions plant in Kingsland.

Safety was paramount. Plants were built at distances to ensure that a fire or blast in one would not set off a chain reaction. A modern water pump and main system included special valves to ensure that firefighters would have adequate water pressure even if part of the system was damaged by explosion. Much of the plant was constructed of wood to prevent sparking that could set off fires, and escape chutes were built into the second floors of the plants, leading to protective ditches. Changing houses were built for both male and female workers to ensure that employees wouldn't track poisonous TNT residue out of the loading areas.

As a result of these measures, Belco was a reasonably safe place to work, and no fires or blasts of note caused significant worker injury or damage to the plant. No employee ever suffered from TNT poisoning though more than 17,000 such incidents occurred at other plants around the country. Nevertheless, a 100-bed hospital stood ready to address injuries and illness.

By July 1918 the first 155 millimeter shells were being filled and rolling off the assembly lines, even as construction work continued on additional factory buildings. Meanwhile, employees enjoyed the benefits of living in modern housing at nearby Belcoville, with running water and heating as well as community amenities like a school, bowling alley, shopping district and YMCA/YWCA.

Belcoville housing ranged from dorms for single employees
to large homes for supervisors with families.
Courtesy Atlantic County Government.

Just four months later, with about 70 percent of the plant built, the war ended, though Belco continued to turn out munitions for several months afterward. Plant buildings were dismantled and sold for scrap, leaving only the concrete foundations. Many of the newly-vacant worker houses were sold, taken down and moved to other locations in the area, while many employees remained in Belcoville to keep the community going.

Belco is listed on the New Jersey and National registers of Historic Places, and Ivan and I visited some of the roads and ruins recently, guided by an informative booklet available at the Estell Manor Park Nature Center. On a warm, sunny day, the gnats were in full force, accompanying us as we walked the broad main path into the complex.

Had we not already known that a busy manufacturing plant had been there less than 100 years ago, we'd never have been able to tell. Roadways are still evident from the long, reasonably straight breaks between trees, but many of the side streets are little more but wide strips of overgrown grass marked with wooden signs.

The booklet points out the sites of several Belco buildings which are a 10 or 15 minute stroll from the visitor center (depending on whether you stop to look for the stray cuckoo or vireo calling from the trees). We found the footings or a water tank and the machine shop, blacksmith and carpenter shop before the gnats got to be too much for us. There's more along the other paths, but from what I understand, most of it is along the lines of "you need an imagination to see it." No doubt, a late fall, winter or early spring visit might be more productive for those wanting to find more of the ruins.

Still, a hike through Belco is thought provoking. If such a busy industrial site can revert to virtual wilderness so quickly, what potential is there for other highly-developed tracts to be reclaimed by nature? So much of New Jersey has been paved over, some to great benefit and some not. Maybe sprawl isn't irreversible after all, and maybe old industrial sites can, with some effort, host wildlife once again.

Oh, and if our experience is any indication, it's a wonderfully reliable place to find Yellow-billed cuckoos. During our visit, we saw at least four, including a pair perched comfortably beside each other not far into the woods from the trail.

From Wireless to Radar: Camp Evans and the InfoAge Science Center

As you drive down Marconi Road in Wall, it's almost startling to see a military-grade satellite dish on the side of the road, across from a Little League field. Travel a bit further, and you'll see a tall antenna marked with a sign denoting it as Marconi property. Neither device has received signals for many years, but they still stand as important symbols of the site's contributions to the science of communications. Once part of the larger nearby Fort Monmouth, the former Camp Evans has been transformed into the InfoAge Science History Learning Center and Museum. That mouthful of a name doesn't even begin to represent the diversity and magnitude of the stuff there. In fact, it's hard to find a place to start describing it.

Ivan and I visited on a recent rainy Sunday afternoon, and it soon became clear that the roughly three hours until closing might not be sufficient to explore the whole place. Since the town of Wall received the property from the U.S. Army with the intent to preserve its history, a band of dedicated volunteers has been working to tell the story of military and commercial information age technology in the environment where some of it was developed. The result is an interesting patchwork of exhibits and artifacts diverse enough to interest everyone from technology geeks and TV/radio enthusiasts to military history nuts and curious kids. While there's still a lot of work to do to transform the former base to a polished learning center, I could definitely see how a receptive student could find inspiration there for a lifelong passion for technology.

The Marconi Hotel, which is now the main building
of the InfoAge Science History Learning Center
at Camp Evans.

The site itself got into the communications business just about 100 years ago, when the American Marconi Company built its Belmar wireless receiving station there. Paired with a high-powered transmission station at New Brunswick, this facility picked up the weak transatlantic radio signals from other Marconi stations as part of the inventor's worldwide communications network. As was explained to us, the building that now houses the exhibit was known as the "hotel," housing the wireless operators who provided 24/7 monitoring of the airwaves.

The U.S. Navy confiscated Marconi's operations during World War I, marking the first time the property was used for military purposes, but it seems that the site's greatest contribution to our nation's defense occurred during World War II. Evans became one of the Army Signal Corps' top communications research facilities, developing improvements to radar technology that were acknowledged by several Axis-power military officials as contributing to the eventual Allied victory. After the war, American researchers were joined by former German scientists who had been working on similar technologies for the Nazis. Their contributions resulted in Cold War advancements in satellite and microwave technologies.

As you walk down the hall from the lobby to the display area, you're invited to check out a series of posters outlining the many developments pioneered at Camp Evans. For one, a satellite designed at Evans was the first to demonstrate the value of these "eyes in the skies" in predicting weather. Apparently, when the satellite sent its first pictures back to earth, a researcher noticed a hurricane formation within one of the images.

Scattered about the photographs, signage and display cases are a variety of vintage military equipment, including beacons that were used by Allied spies to help guide U.S. aircraft on supply and bombing missions on overcast days when they wouldn't otherwise be able to drop their payloads. To make a point about the evolution of non-military uses of technology developed at Evans, our guide pointed out a "Hot Wheels" functional radar gun atop one of the displays. More advanced than anything built on site, it's now available in toy stores for less than $100.

The next stop on our visit was the Radio Technology Museum and National Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Curated and operated by members of the New Jersey Antique Radio Club, the museum features the evolution of commercial radio and recorded sound, using operating vintage equipment. In an age of MP3 players and satellite radio, club members open visitors' eyes to the days of crystal sets and consoles that required three dials to tune in a station. They've got plenty of sets from the 20s and 30's, as well as phonographs from an Edison cylinder player to a 45 RPM children's record player. Just about every recording medium is there, too, from wire to vinyl, reel-to-reel, cassette, 8-track and CD. The exhibit ends with an assortment of early televisions and a discussion of color TV technology.

There's a lot more to InfoAge than I've outlined here, and we'll be returning to share other stories in the future. That said, right now, the site even has something for birders! A portion of the property has been roped off to create a safe radius for a bald eagles' nest. We weren't able to locate the nest or see any of the raptors while we were there, but a passer-by told us she'd seen an eaglet testing his or her wings earlier in the day.