No pita with this Gyro: Earle Eckel's hidden airport

State Route 57 in Warren County seems like some sort of supernatural entity. No matter how well I think I get to know it, no matter how many times Ivan and I travel its length, subsequent trips always seem to reveal something new.

Or, more accurately, something old.

Just the other day, we were driving the road west of downtown Washington when I looked to the left and saw this:

How could we have missed Eckel's Autogiro Port near the corner of Route 57 and Mill Pond Road? Look a little closer at this seemingly freshly-painted sign, and you can see a claim that this is the first exclusive autogiro airport in America. THAT I would have remembered; we're always happy to find new airfields.

As I discovered with a little research, we'd stumbled upon one of Washington's more accomplished citizens, Earle S. Eckel. Born in 1891, he showed a remarkable combination of entrepreneurship and ingenuity from a very young age. By the time he turned 20, he'd already fulfilled a contract to string telephone wires from Philipsburg to Washington, built a steam engine that both powered his mom's washing machine and heated the wash water, and operated his own mobile movie theater enterprise, among other ventures.

Detailing all of Eckel's enterprises will make for a good future Hidden New Jersey entry, but for now we'll stick with the autogiro port. Long story short, an interest in motorcycles eventually got Eckel into automobile sales and repairs in Washington, and then to gasoline and fuel oil. Petroleum was good to him: in partnership with his brother, he opened a chain of nine service stations, which they sold to the Tidewater Oil Company in 1930. The windfall was substantial, and he used a portion of it to buy his own airplane. Predictably, that led to another business: Eckel Air Service, which offered flying lessons and charter flights from Easton Airport.

Eckel eventually left the airline business when it proved to be less than profitable, but the venture whetted his interest in aviation, particularly when it came to a craft that he could keep on his Mill Pond Road property. He didn't have enough room for an airplane, so he selected the recently-developed Pitcairn autogiro. Sporting both a nose-mounted propeller and a helicopter-type rotor above, it offered the joy of flying at slow speeds with the convenience of shorter takeoffs.

Reflecting his usual enthusiasm for new ventures, Eckel built a well-equipped airfield on his property in 1931, clearing a runway, installing floodlights and erecting a hangar. Two years later he bought a second craft, building another hangar to store it.

Eckel with Tidewater's autogiro Miss Vedol.

According to some accounts, Eckel held the nation's first transport autogiro pilot's license and flew the first airmail from Washington NJ to Newark during National Air Week in 1938. Locally, the autogiro made Eckel a few bucks in towing advertising banners and offering flying lessons, while he often traveled to out-of-state air shows to fly stunts competitively. He found his real success as a pilot for the Tidewater Oil Company, which hired him to fly two multi-state promotional tours for their Veedol motor oil. Estimating that he flew a total of more than 4000 passengers in the autogiro, he told the Schenectady Gazette that "safety is the keynote of the autogiro, these ships being able to land in small patches of level ground far too small for conventional type planes."

Eckel continued to keep his autogiros at the port even after selling the property in 1942, but as his interests turned to other pursuits, the field reverted to its former use as farm fields. Meanwhile, improvements in helicopter technology and the relative costliness of autogiros pretty much sealed their fate in the commercial market. Improved versions of the technology are still available today and are occasionally used for surveillance

As for Eckel, he died in 1978, having lived an interesting and varied life. Today, his former home and gyro port are the basis of the Pleasant Valley Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Only a small wooden sign and the bright side of the one remaining hangar indicate anything remarkable about the placid little area where once an adventurous mind took flight.

Contact! and Ahoy! Aviation on the Hackensack River

Substantially industrialized rivers can hold a lot of secrets. Sometimes they're regrettable, in the form of pollution and blight that take decades and millions of dollars to remove. Other times, they reveal a more romantic past, with activities you can barely imagine the area could support today.

We recently got a lead on one of these stories from reader Greg Parson, who commented on our story about New Jersey Aviation Hall of Famer Ed Gorski and the Lincoln Park Airport. Among his reminiscences about Gorski and the field, he mentioned that his uncle, George Lambros, had operated a seaplane base in Little Ferry.

A seaplane base? On the Hackensack River? With our friends from Hackensack Riverkeeper, we'd cruised up the river in August, enjoying the rebirth of the Meadowlands punctuated with occasional stories of past and present commerce on the river, but I couldn't recall hearing anything about aircraft. Had I missed something?

Indeed, when I mentioned it to friends on Facebook, several confirmed that two bases were operational at the location at some point in the past 40 years. One friend even noted that she used to watch the takeoffs when she was growing up in Ridgefield.

Greg kindly got back to me with some additional information, including an address and the observation that the current Little Ferry Seaplane Base is actually across the river from the original Lambros property, which was in Ridgefield Park. The Little Ferry location had once been the home to a famed restaurant called Tracey's Nine Mile House, which apparently served an amazing sliced steak sandwich.

Depending on your perspective, this is either the Hackensack River
or Runway 01-19 of Little Ferry Seaplane Base.

With that information in hand, I took to the web for additional background. While there's not a lot of data out there on George Lambros or his operation, I did discover that the base opened in August, 1947 as an adjunct of sorts to nearby Teterboro Airport. Lambros operated an instructional school and seaplane rental out of the base, using craft like the Grumman Wigeon to certify pilots for water takeoffs and landings. Among those giving the lessons was Springfield resident Kathleen Hilbrandt, who'd received her flight instructor rating after serving in the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II.

Lambros didn't have a monopoly on that stretch of the Hackensack, with Mellor-Howard Seaplane Base operating nearby. The Hackensack Riverkeeper himself, Bill Sheehan, also informed us that another seaplane port operated farther upriver, at Carlstadt. Now the site of River Barge Park and Marina, the former Sky Harbor was also a training location for water-heading pilots during World War II.

Look for more recent information about the Little Ferry operation, and you're up for a difficult search, especially if you attempt to find the seaplane base itself. At least two owners have operated the base since Lambros, but I couldn't find the date when it moved across the river from Ridgefield Park to Little Ferry. Several sources, including the Federal Aviation Administration website, list it as an active base, with two operations reported in 2012 (I'm assuming that's one landing and one takeoff, but I could be wrong). However, when Ivan and I visited the site recently, all we could find was a closed restaurant (perhaps the successor to Tracey's), a dock that appears to have seen better days, and no evidence of aircraft whatsoever. To be fair, the area was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. Across the river, the former site of the Lambros base is occupied by a large industrial building.

Needless to say, we'll be doing a bit more research on this fascinating aspect of the Hackensack River. Meanwhile, if you're in the area and see an amphibious airplane coming in for a landing, let us know!

From Navy Wildcat to traffic helicopters: the story of Linden Airport

Studied closely, the gritty borders of U.S. Route 1 have a litany of stories to tell, their inspirations lost to progress or the wrecking ball. Like the phragmites reedgrass that grows so well in disturbed soil, the presence of a new strip mall is often a good indicator of something notable that's been replaced.

That, at least, is the case on one stretch of road in Linden. On the western side of Route 1, you'll see a large, fenced-off field; the only indication of the enormity of its previous use is the presence of big mounds of milled rubble. Across several lanes of traffic is a big-box mall and multiplex cinema of recent vintage; tall signs declare it to be Aviation Plaza.

In true 'blink and you'll miss it' fashion, you might notice one of those small square road signs with an airplane on it, the international designation for an airport, with the word "Linden" below it. And a little farther down, on the eastern side of the road, you might see a larger, but still modest sign saying "Linden Airport" at a nondescript intersection. What's an airport doing here, just a few miles down Route 1 from Newark Liberty International Airport?

Linden Airport seen from overhead. The large parking lot
and big-box mall at right were built after 1998,
replacing additional runways and older hangars.

The airfield and the empty field, as it turns out, share a common history. Between 1937 and 2005, that massive lot was home to a General Motors assembly plant where thousands of workers manufactured vehicles under just about every GM nameplate, from Cadillacs to pickup trucks and SUVs. Soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, the company's sights took to the air, bringing Linden along with it.

In early 1942, GM created the Eastern Aircraft Corporation to take over the production of the Grumman Wildcat fighters for the U.S. Navy. The Linden plant was retooled to produce planes and an airport was quickly built across the highway as a testing and commissioning field. More than 3500 planes rolled off the production line and took to the skies from Linden, built with pride by hundreds of local men and women.

Following the war, GM's Linden Assembly plant resumed production of civilian vehicles and its airport found new life. The Federal government deeded the property to the City of Linden under the condition that it continue operation as an airfield, ready for recommissioning for military use in the event of future war. Since then, advances in defensive technology make that possibility highly unlikely, but as the airport's website notes, "back then it was considered a vital part of our military's strategic industrial reserve plan."

As Newark Airport grew as a regional hub and gained international status, the Linden field became a reliable landing spot for smaller commercial traffic that would ordinarily be dwarfed by passenger and freight jets. Though it lacks a radio tower of its own, New York radio and television news stations continue to count on the now-dubbed KLDJ as home for their traffic helicopters, and hobby pilots can use it as an alternative that's almost as close to Manhattan as Teterboro. The field even hosts occasional events like the Red Bull Air Race, held there in 2010.

For historians, however, ghosts of the World War II era field are virtually impossible to find. Present day Linden Airport bears little resemblance to the World War II-era test field, with only one original landing strip still in existence. The old hangars at the north end of the airfield were torn down in 1998 and replaced by newer structures tucked out of sight from Route 1. The rest of the property is now taken up by the Aviation Plaza shopping center and multiplex theater.

On the positive side, LDJ has fared much better than many of New Jersey's other airfields-turned-retail locations. Unlike South Plainfield's old Hadley Field, aviators can set down at Linden, do some last-minute holiday shopping and quickly return to the skies. It seems that the ratable-seeking Linden city government may have found the best of both worlds: maintaining its original commitment to keep the field operational for perpetuity while increasing the tax base.

Aviation history on a short runway: Lincoln Park's Ed Gorski

Hidden New Jersey has taken real or virtual visits to a lot of New Jersey airfields and historical aviation sites like Hadley Field in South Plainfield, Doolittle’s Landing in Boonton, Greenwood Lake and even the old passenger terminal at Newark Liberty International Airport. Through those visits and subsequent research, we’ve learned just how common airfields once were in New Jersey communities, and how many we’ve lost to time and real estate development pressures.

Granted, with the increase in commercial air flight, the skies are a lot more crowded than they were in the heyday of these small airstrips, but some aviation fields are still thriving. Some of the key smaller airports, like Teterboro, Morristown, Princeton and Caldwell/Essex County have evolved to handle corporate jets and the like. They’re an alternative to the major airports, especially for bigwigs who can afford to rent a private jet or own a propeller plane of their own.

Then there are the general aviation fields like Lincoln Park, which have remained largely middle-class in demeanor, with no fancy aircraft or equipment around. Those are the places that really hark back to the days when all a fixed-base operator (FBO) really needed was a wind sock, a level field and someplace to gas up the plane. Standing on the grounds, you can easily imagine that the next plane to land might be piloted by Charles Lindbergh or Wiley Post, returning from a leisurely flight over the Jersey countryside.

Back in the day, one could never know who just might be running the place. She might be an accomplished military pilot like Marjorie Gray, or, in the case of Lincoln Park, Amelia Earhart's mechanic Ed Gorski.

Ed Gorski with Amelia Earhart and mechanic
Bernt Balchen
(photo credit performancedatamanagement.com )

Actually, to simply say that Gorski worked with Earhart is ignoring his much more eventful career, in which he had a hand in the construction or maintenance of several airplanes that would later make history. He was among the first mechanics to work at what would become Teterboro Airport, helping famed aviator Clarence Chamberlin construct surplus World War I airplanes. Later, while working for Atlantic Aircraft Corp., he worked on the plane Commander Byrd flew over the North Pole, and the Fokker Friendship in which Amelia Earhart flew as the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. He was also on the crew that built the first airplane to fly from an aircraft deck in what was envisioned as ship-to-shore airmail.

Gorski reconnected with Earhart in 1932, as she prepared to become the first woman to pilot an airplane across the Atlantic. Working with another mechanic, he reinforced Earhart's Lockheed Vega to withstand the rigors of the extended flight time and added weight of the extra fuel the craft would be required to carry. To test their handiwork, Gorski and the other mechanic logged several consecutive hours of flight time over the Meadowlands, loading the Vega with sandbags to simulate the weight of the fuel it would require for the crossing. When they were ready to return to the airport, they'd drop the sandbags where Giants Stadium now stands, leading a few observers to believe the marsh was being bombed. Gorski also accompanied Earhart to her departure site in Newfoundland to make any last minute adjustments before her historic flight.

Following his stint with Earhart's Vega, Gorski opened an FBO operation at Teterboro with his new wife Julia. Together they made a living during the depths of the Depression, providing flight lessons, running sight-seeing flights to Hackensack and back, selling airplanes and operating an aerial photography business, among other ventures. After the United States entered World War II, they moved the business to Warwick, NY and continued training pilots until Ed joined the Air Corps. Julia kept the business going as Ed flew in the Pacific theater, though wartime shortages eventually forced her to close up shop.

The Gorskis returned to New Jersey after the war, purchasing the Lincoln Park Airport in 1946. He might not have continued to make aviation history, but in many respects, Ed did much more. From all accounts, he and Julia ran a tight operation with little tolerance for cutting corners or bending the rules. In my research, I found fond remembrances from several former employees and people who'd flown in and out of Lincoln Park, recounting the lessons Ed taught them, and how he made them better, more disciplined pilots. Many mentioned his unassuming nature and their own amazement that this down-to-earth man had worked with so many aviation greats.

Both Ed and Julia were named to the New Jersey Aviation Hall of Fame in the 1970s; Ed as part of the inaugural class which included Lindbergh, Earhart and Chamberlin. While the Gorskis retired in 1979, Lincoln Park Airport continues to attract regular traffic and appears well maintained. Unlike so many of New Jersey's other historic airfields, it seems that Ed Gorski's old field will continue to welcome flyers for quite some time.

Defying gravity and convention: aviator Marjorie Gray

The 1997 Douglass College Alumnae Directory lists Marjorie Gray, class of 1933, as a retired technical editor for Grumman Aerospace Corporation. Nothing in the listing refers to her pioneering achievements as one of America's vanguard of women pilots, except for the designation "LTC." Those three letters stand for "lieutenant colonel," Gray's rank when she retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1972.

Born in New York in 1912, Gray was raised in Cliffside Park. A few years after graduating from the New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College of Rutgers University), she flew her first solo flight at Nelson Airport in Franklin Lakes. It was a start of a lifelong love of aviation that saw her gain a commercial license and fly 19 types of military aircraft.

Gray was a social worker and air traffic control trainee when famed aviator Jackie Cochran invited her to join the first class of Womens Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Started in 1942 to relieve the shortage of eligible male pilots not already serving in the military, the WASPs were civilian pilots recruited to transport military aircraft to their points of embarkation during World War II. Participants had to be between the ages of 21 and 35, hold a commercial license and 200-horsepower engine rating, a minimum 500 hours flying time, and cross-country flying experience. Many WASPs had more experience and were more skilled pilots than many of their male counterparts in the Army Air Corps.

Stationed at Newcastle Air Force Base in Delaware, Gray logged over 750 hours flying B-24s, B-25s, B-26s, DC-3s and other aircraft. Though I haven't been able to track down any additional information on her service, it's possible that she served as a flight instructor for the Air Corps, as many of her colleagues were.

Her wartime service alone would be enough to make Gray a notable name in aviation history, but after the WASPs were disbanded in 1944, she continued making aviation history. She returned to New Jersey and became one of the first women in the country to operate a fixed-base operation, or airport services business. Based at Teterboro Airport from 1946 to 1950, Marjorie M. Gray Aero Service offered flying lessons, piloted charter flights and assessed new aviators for licensure as a pilot examiner. No doubt, her customers could rely on her versatility: besides her commercial license, she had earned ratings for seaplane, multiengine and instrument flying.

Gray later joined the Air Force Reserve and worked as a writer and editor for Grumman, Curtis Aviation and Flying Magazine. She was active in the aviation community through leadership positions in the Ninety-Nines, the organization founded by 99 licensed women pilots in 1929 for the mutual support and advancement of aviation. The Womens' International Association of Aeronautics awarded her the Lady Drummond-Hay trophy in 1956 for her many achievements and contributions to the field.

Describing her years in aviation as "the best time in my life," Gray accumulated more than 3000 hours in the skies. She died in 2008, at the age of 95.

I discovered Gray's story at Teterboro's Aviation Hall of Fame of New Jersey, into which she was inducted in 1992. Hers is one of many fascinating stories of people with a Garden State connection who've made air and space history locally and worldwide. We'll be returning to some more of those people -- and the Hall of Fame's museum exhibits -- in future Hidden New Jersey stories.

Meeting the Lindbergh of Mexico... in Tabernacle

Even as we uncover obscure places, people and facts around New Jersey, I keep a short list of more widely-known destinations in the back of my head for further exploration if we happen to be in the area. I've seen a good number of the old reliables that the guidebooks and other media have featured, but there are a few I haven't gotten to for one reason or another.

The Carranza Memorial is one of them. Deep in the Pinelands, it marks the spot where Mexican Air Force Captain Emilio Carranza's plane crashed on July 12, 1928. Dubbed the Charles Lindbergh of Mexico, the aviator was concluding a goodwill tour in the United States with an attempt to fly from Long Island to Mexico City. If successful, he would have achieved the second longest non-stop airplane flight to date, after Lindbergh's own New York to Paris achievement the year before. Unfortunately, it was not to be. The dashing young pioneer ran into a thunderstorm over southern New Jersey, and his plane plummeted to the ground in dense woods outside Tabernacle.

Carranza may have crashed in an obscure area, but he was not to be forgotten. A few years later, the crash location was marked by a monument erected by the Mexican government and funded by contributions from the country's school children. Constructed of brick stones mined from every state in Mexico, the moderately-sized obelisk is marked with an Aztec eagle and an arrow to represent the flight, plus inscriptions in Spanish and English.

Sounds pretty cool, right? And with a bird on the monument, it's right up Ivan's alley, so why the delay for us? Fact is, we hadn't made it to the general Carranza-politan area because the Pinelands is seldom birded. Yeah, it's an enormous, reasonably pristine stretch of forest, punctuated only occasionally by a town or a county road, but the habitat is much less varied than what you find in other wooded parts of the state. Just about everywhere you look, you see sandy soil and slim conifers, maybe with an oak thrown in for good measure. I could go into a dissertation as to why this is, but the short answer has to do with the porousness of the soil and, to some extent, the burn cycles that favor the existing flora. Bottom line, less variety leads to fewer species of birds. And, of course, birders go where they'll find many species or a sought-after specialty.

In any case, it's been on my 'go to' list for years, and I knew it was accessible because Mexican consular officials and the local American Legion hold a ceremony there every year. "How?" was the question. Every time I noticed the memorial on a map, deep within Wharton State Forest, no decent roads seemed to lead to it. Certainly there had to be a path or trail, but I'd seen enough sand roads off thoroughfares in the larger Pinelands to think twice about taking them. Getting stranded miles from help didn't sound like much fun.

Our recent Brig jaunt brought us near the Pinelands, so I suggested we might make a lengthy detour and attempt to find Carranza. After all, we still hadn't seen our desired cone seed-eating crossbills and evening grosbeaks, we'd be surrounded by conifers, and ... eh, who was I kidding? We were going to scour vast acres of pine trees on the futile search for birds? Let's just dive in and go. We plotted a general route on county roads from the refuge and were on our way.

Thing was, we were basically aiming to get to our desired location from Wharton's southern boundary, when the best route was probably from the north. If I was reading Ivan's ancient New Jersey map properly, we were bound to run into some sandy two-track roads once we were in the forest proper, but they appeared to be unmarked and confusing. Maybe it made some sense to stop and grab a map at Batsto Village, on the southern edge of the forest. Finding that was easy, given all of the directional signs on the road.

Now, the historic community of Batsto deserves an entry all to itself, and we'll definitely get there again for a closer look, but it was too late in the day us to do it justice on this trip. The information desk folks were very friendly and advised us to head north on a county road lining the eastern edge of Wharton, then make a left onto Speedwell-Friendship Road, which would bring us to Carranza Road and the memorial, directly across from the Batona camp. The paved road would turn to gravel, but at least we'd avoid the rutted sand/dirt roads.

We zoomed east and then north on the prescribed county roads, past cranberry bogs I recognized from my past visit to Chatsworth (you mean I'd been that close and didn't realize it???). Now fully harvested, the bogs were dry, the plants a dark red color that made them look berry stained. We went on a bit longer until we arrived at our left turn, Speedwell-Friendship Road.

Now we were truly in the Pines. Thin, scraggled trees lined both sides of the road, many so close together it appeared impossible to hike between them. "A deer could never get a rack through there," I observed as Ivan directed the car down the straight road. About three miles in, the road track turned to gravel -- not as secure as macadam but definitely preferable to sand. Overall, the surface quality was decent, with few potholes or other potential perils. Still, I'd avoid driving it at night; the desolation and lack of streetlights would create quite a challenge, particularly for those who fear old JD.

We made the right turn onto Carranza Road, hoping our destination wasn't that much further ahead. Cars and SUVs became visible through the trees on the side of the road, which meant we'd either reached the Batona camp, the memorial was a lot less hidden away than I'd thought, or we'd totally messed up and were headed into a more populated area we hadn't known about. Then....

There it was! Located in a large clearing, the obelisk is bordered by several hardy plants that reminded me somewhat of agave or aloe vera. The park was bigger than I thought it would be; somehow I'd imagined the memorial was just planted among the pines. Visitors can learn Carranza's story from a bilingual wayside marker, and two holes in the ground appear to be there to receive American and Mexican flags for the annual ceremony.

We were starting to lose sunlight, and we wanted to stop in Chatsworth, so we were on our way after paying our respects to Carranza. As luck would have it, the road turned from gravel to macadam maybe a mile or less north of the memorial. Keep it in mind if you want to make a visit there: the trip is quicker and smoother going south from Tabernacle, but if you want more of a Pinelands experience, come in from the south.

As I've been thinking about Carranza, I'm struck by a couple of things related to the popular comparison of him to Lindbergh. It's interesting to think that just a few years after Carranza's plane, reportedly an exact replica of The Spirit of St. Louis, crashed in the wilderness of the Pinelands, Lindbergh moved his family to a remote location in New Jersey's Sourlands, looking for a respite from unrelenting public attention. Lindbergh was forced to leave the country to find peace after the kidnap of his first child. Carranza is a footnote in world aviation history but is remembered by family, country and a small but dedicated group of New Jerseyans who return to his death site every year. Lindbergh's Sourlands estate is maybe a little less remote, but still obscure and hard to find unless you've found a local who can tell you where it is. That's a Hidden New Jersey jaunt for another time.