Finding the monoliths of Changewater

The opening day of fishing season in New Jersey was a great day to take a good wander around the countryside, and I found myself once again traipsing through Warren County, partially on Route 46, some on Route 31 and finally on Route 57. This time I was off to find a concrete house built by an employee of Edison's Portland cement company, and I actually found it, though not without a bit of discovery along the way.

I mention fishing season because it seemed I couldn't go very far without seeing anglers casting their luck for the first time in 2015. Both the Pequest and the Musconetcong Rivers were popular, with clutches of waders-wearing fishermen standing midstream or on the banks.

After taking a turn off Route 57 south of Port Colden, I found myself on Changewater Road, driving along fields, past a few McMansion enclaves and finally to the small community of Changewater. The road bends and quickly descends to the level of the Musconetcong River, which splits into upper and lower branches there, giving the hamlet its name.

An old one-lane bridge crosses the river at that point, and when I arrived, a few vehicles were parked in a small gravel-covered lot on the Warren County side. Yup -- more anglers capitalizing on a nice day for fishing. However, that's not why I stopped.

I stopped for the monoliths.

A couple of dark old cut-stone columns stood on either side of the river, and when I got out of the car to check them out, I noticed they lined up with stone structures farther up the hills on either side of the road. If you drew a straight line along the top of the several columns, you could imagine train tracks stretching across what's basically a ravine. It put me in the mind of the better known Paulinskill Viaduct, which, though made from cast concrete rather than quarried stone, is similar in that it just kind of jumps up on you when you least expect it, in a seemingly unspoiled environment.

The trestle, back in the day.

I'd found the remains of the Changewater Trestle, which predates the Paulinskill Viaduct by nearly 50 years. The Changewater was part of John Blair's Warren Railroad, which connected the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western's (DL&W) terminal point on the Delaware River with the Hampton station of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, primarily to get coal from Pennsylvania to the New York markets. (We briefly covered the technical challenges of building the Warren in an earlier Hidden New Jersey story on another discovery behind Shippen Manor.)

As it seems with so many other discoveries we make, the age of the trestle depends on who you ask. Even the twin markers on the Hunterdon County side disagree -- an older sign saying the railroad ran there in 1856 while the newer placard says 1862. Both agree, however, that the railroad, owned by the DL&W by that point, stopped running there by 1960. The rails were removed, presumably along with the track bed, at that point. I'd have to find an old railroad map to be sure, but I'd venture to guess that this stretch was connected with the length that once ran behind Shippen Manor, which was pretty much rendered secondary, and less profitable, when the Paulinskill Viaduct shortened the route to Scranton.

On its own, Changewater has a neat little story once you do a little digging. Originally home to a colonial-era iron furnace, it was apparently a productive hamlet during the 19th century. The Washington Township website notes that at various points, the village had hosted a snuff factory, a flour mill, distillery, tannery and a picture frame factory, as well as a railroad station. Locals could grab the train there until passenger service ended in 1926.

Nowadays, Changewater still has a post office, but the community is mostly residential in nature, offering the type of village living many think is impossible to find in New Jersey. Whether the fishing is any good on that stretch of the Musconetcong, I couldn't tell you, but I'd venture there are a lot worse places to be on a sunny spring morning.

And as for that concrete house I mentioned? That's a story for another day.

Nearly running the gauntlet in Oxford

In our travels, we've sometimes been fortunate to find hidden history in pairs, like the Warren County Alms House and its cemetery, separated by a few miles. Other times, we don't find the proximity until we're knee-deep in research, miles away from what was once so close it's surprising we hadn't tripped on it.

We found ourselves roaming the back roads of Warren County again recently, and made a quick stop in Oxford, the site of a historic iron furnace and its' founder's home, Shippen Manor. When you set off on a wandering mission, you always take the chance that a historic home or museum won't be open, and that always seems to be the case when I happen to be in the greater Oxford-politan area. Nonetheless, because Ivan hadn't been there before, I pulled onto the property and slowly drove the road that traverses behind the manor and wraps around the front.

Good thing I did, too, because we discovered something I hadn't noticed on my other visits. Embedded in the stone retaining wall between the home and the drive was this:

The Warren Railroad was a new one on me, but I wasn't surprised to discover that there had been yet another company operating what I assumed was freight transport in the area. After all, Oxford Furnace was just down the hill, and Warren County's own John Blair was the nation's most active builder of railroads in the 19th century.

Back at Hidden New Jersey headquarters, I did some digging to find out where this plaque originally sat and why it was at Shippen Manor. And once again, I discovered that we'd been very close to more of the story without realizing it. The plaque had capped the top of the western portal of a now-abandoned tunnel built by an ambitious railroad executive.

Railroad history in New Jersey is long and convoluted, to the point where it would probably make for a good miniseries for someone who had the patience to work through it all. For the purpose of the Oxford story, it's only really necessary to know that the Warren Railroad was chartered in 1851 to connect the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western's terminal point on the Delaware with the Central Railroad of New Jersey's Hampton station. The goal: to further connect the coal mines of Pennsylvania with markets in New York City. The fact that the Oxford Furnace was nearby probably didn't hurt, either.

Construction began in 1854, and it was an ambitious task, pitting mid-19th century technology against the very stubborn gneiss rock of northwestern New Jersey. Most frustrating, it seems, was Oxford Mountain (now known as Scott's Mountain) at Van Nest Gap, where the path of the railroad called for a 3002-foot long tunnel to avoid laying track at a steep incline with difficult curves. In the words of the New York Times account of the tunnel construction, "The rock is of a syenitic formation, and during the progress of the job almost every form of underground operations proved necessary. From the hard, seamless rock, offering the most stubborn resistance to construction, every degree of formation was encountered, to quicksand, with an unusual quantity of water."

Understanding that the tunnel would take some time to build, Blair's engineers devised an alternate path around the mountain, enabling the railroad to commence operations in 1856. In fact, my research reveals that without realizing it, Ivan and I had driven along the interim right-of-way when we passed behind Shippen Manor. He'd noticed that beyond the current driveway, the trees directly ahead -- ones that would have been in the road if it had continued on a straight path -- were younger than those to the side. We'd surmised that it might have been a carriage path, not considering the possibility of a railroad running so close to the house.

The Van Nest Gap tunnel opened to train traffic in 1862, paralleling present-day Route 31 and shortening the trip between Scranton and the Hudson River by six miles. While it originally had two tracks to simultaneously accommodate traffic in both directions, changes in railroad gauge and an increase in the size of rolling stock forced a change to gauntlet tracks in 1900. Basically, another set of closely overlapping tracks was built parallel to an existing set, with traffic headed eastward using one track and the westward another. (You can find a more technical description here.) This allowed larger trains to pass through the tunnel but also caused delays, as only one train could pass through the tunnel at a time.

Meanwhile, the Warren Railroad had come under the control of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, which undertook yet another ambitious project to eliminate the Oxford bottleneck. The Lackawanna Cut-off reduced the length of the railroad's main line by another 11 miles and included the famed Paulinskill Viaduct, an impressive 110-foot high concrete bridge over the Paulinskill Valley. The Warren Railroad route was relegated to second-banana status, starting a decline from which it never recovered. By 1970, even the tracks were gone, leaving just memories, a partially flooded tunnel and a capstone that shares a hint of a story to the few people who might notice it behind a historic house.