London Calling at the Pole Farm

On any given summer day, an 800-acre expanse of grasslands and forested tract on Lawrence Township’s Cold Soil Road is alive with buzzing insects and chirping birds. Ninety years ago the tract was alive with state-of-the-art radio technology that transmitted telephone calls to Europe, South America and the Caribbean. 

Locals dubbed it the Pole Farm for the ever-increasing number of oversized telephone poles that sprouted up to meet increasing demand for international telecommunications service. Today the poles are gone and the site is part of Mercer Meadows, a unit of the Mercer County Park System.

The Pole Farm’s quaint appellation belies the magnitude of its stature as the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's Long Lines Overseas Telephone Radio Transmitting Station. More than two dozen steel towers, and then hundreds of towering poles were erected between 1929 and the 1960s to support antennae that transmitted telephone calls via shortwave radio to points across the Atlantic.

These days, we take international telephone service for granted; with the advent of web-based services, many of us skip the phone for video anyway. In the early 20^th century, however, telecommunication was limited to places that had been physically wired into the system. Thus, North America could talk to North America, and Europe could talk to Europe, but there was no way for people in the Eastern Hemisphere to talk with those in the Western Hemisphere.

Enter the wonders of radio, which was becoming commercially viable for voice signals in the early 1920s. Bell Labs engineers first devised a way to transmit converted phone signals to London and back via long-wave radio signals, but that was on an expensive single circuit. If AT&T had any hope of selling international telephone service to the public, it had to be both cost effective and available on demand.

The answer came in shortwave radio, which overcame the issues of long-wave but brought its own limitations. (Big science alert here!) To beam powerful signals long distances, specialized radio antennas would have to be located precisely, built under exacting conditions and suspended by large arrays of towers. Bell Labs engineers again got to work, determining what kind of equipment the service would need and where it would need to be located to operate optimally. Their solution also had to address the very real problem that the wavelengths of shortwave vary in how well they work, depending on the time of day. If the service were to be reliable, engineers would have to overcome the limitation with a better antenna.

Beyond the knotty radio transmission challenges, AT&T needed two pieces of land - one to build a transmitter and another to build a receiver - far enough away from each other to assure that the arriving and departing signals didn't interfere with each other. Building them in sparsely populated areas would assure that there wouldn't be much if any other radio traffic to interfere. The transmitting station needed to be relatively close to U.S. Route 1, where the primary East Coast telephone system trunk line was located.

Netcong in hilly, rural western Morris County proved to be a suitable location for the receiving station, narrowing the possibilities for a transmitting station to the south. Lawrence and Hopewell Townships proved to be just the spot, with appropriately level farmland that was largely cleared. AT&T’s land acquisition team quietly began negotiating with 14 farmers in 1928, moving quickly in the hopes that deals would close before local chatter would prompt property owners to raise their prices. Word got out in the local newspaper, and while AT&T initially denied being in the market for farmland, it eventually admitted the transactions and closed the deals.

Following the purchases, AT&T quickly got to work on the infrastructure, both here in New Jersey and the first two international locations, London and Buenos Aires.

The Lawrence Township facility included two radio transmission buildings complete with an innovative water cooling system for the powerful vacuum tubes that generated the necessary shortwaves. To the outside world, the most remarkable feature of the facility was the v-shaped configuration of 180-foot-high steel towers – 26 in all – which supported a series of wire-mesh antennas. Placed about 250 feet apart, the lines of towers extended about a mile in each direction, aimed to beam signals to London and Buenos Aires. Somewhat like shades that could be rolled up and down, the mesh curtain antennas were precisely tuned to accommodate the complexities of shortwave technology at a given time of day or night. Machinery hoisted the various curtains on Roebling cable at the appointed hours to ensure reliable telephone service 24 hours a day.

Work was completed in Lawrence and London in 1929, right on schedule, with Buenos Aires coming online in 1930. Technological advancements soon improved efficiency and capacity, enabling the site to handle more calls on a single radio channel and bringing the cost of a call to $30 for three minutes. Meanwhile, some of the farmers who once owned the land had made deals to lease it back, and continued to raise crops in the shadows of the towers. One could say the property was bearing fruit for everyone.

An example of the layout of a single rhomboid antenna,
illustrated on the Pole Farm's concrete map. 

Just three years after the massive towers were erected, AT&T introduced the rhombic antenna – a five acre-wide diamond-shaped array of eight poles, each 80 feet high, holding up the antenna wire. These smaller, less expensive arrays spelled the end for the giant curtain antennae, which were dismantled in 1939. Further advancements brought the twin rhombic antenna (think one diamond next to another). It’s the proliferation of those, over time, that led locals to dub the tract the Pole Farm. With farming still going on around and amid the antennae, it probably didn’t take much imagination for an onlooker to conclude that the tract’s big crop was oversized telephone poles.

By the mid 1950’s, the site was the largest facility of its type in the world, handling more than a million calls a year. The site’s remaining woodlots and orchards were cleared to erect even more antennas, totaling more than 2000 poles by the 1960s. Old farmhouses, previously converted to housing for AT&T workers, were either moved offsite or demolished to create more space.

In the end, the technological progress that had given birth to the Pole Farm was what ultimately what created its demise. The successful introduction of transatlantic telephone cables and then satellite telecommunication proved to offer more reliable, less costly service. AT&T relegated the Pole Farm to backup status in the 1960s, removing antennae as they were taken out of service. In the final years, the facility that once provided groundbreaking voice communications to world capitals was now left to serve small markets in countries most Americans couldn’t easily locate on a map.

AT&T fully decommissioned the Lawrence Overseas Telephone Radio Transmitting Station on December 31, 1975. By the end of 1977, virtually every standing structure on the Pole Farm had been demolished – everything but a single pole from the Tel Aviv rhombic. Farmer Charlie Bryan had requested that it remain standing as a lightning rod to protect his home and barn nearby.

Other traces of the Pole Farm’s infrastructure are largely gone, through you might find the stray cable or concrete footing among the ground foliage as you stroll along the wooded paths. The county has memorialized the two transmitter buildings with steel arches that approximate where their entrances would have been. The site of Building Two, not far from the parking lot, includes a large concrete map of the antenna configurations that once stood on the grounds. One can walk from Bogota to Berlin, to Moscow, to London, to Willemstad, to Bermuda, imagining the conversations that flowed through those radio waves.

Turns out, too, that the Pole Farm is a remarkably lovely place to visit on a summer afternoon. In the two decades since Mercer County bought the property, 435 acres of the former farmland has been converted to native grasslands. It’s great habitat for Short-eared Owls and Harriers in winter, and Grasshopper Sparrow, Bobolink and Meadowlark in summer. The Washington Crossing Audubon has pegged the fields as outstanding for butterflies if the county leaves the grasses and wildflowers unmowed for the summer.

Level gravel paths make the entire place very welcoming to anyone on foot, bicycle, stroller or wheelchair. As you walk or roll or run, consider that some of the very routes you’re taking are the service roads that linemen once used as they maintained the antennae that connected the world’s voices. Stop to look closely in the woods, and you might even see vestiges of the poles, guy lines and concrete footings that stabilized the antennae. Interpretive signage along the paths offer photos of the structures that once stood there, along with portraits of some of the people who kept the station humming. A leisurely visit will leave you marveling at what once stood there.

While I’ve covered a lot, there’s so much more to the Pole Farm, from nature to history to technology. Lawrence Township historian Dennis Waters’ very informative presentation for the Mercer County Park Commission, available on YouTube, dives a bit deeper into the technology, the people who worked at the site, and the post AT&T history. It’s definitely worth watching.

Newark's State Fair was a great state fair

Midwestern-born friends of ours admitted to being a bit confused at the hubbub advertised as the State Fair and held in the parking lot of the Meadowlands Sports Complex earlier this summer. I can't say I blame them: it wasn't a real state fair, with 4H exhibits, tractor pulls and judged livestock shows. That's held at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in August. The other one, technically named "State Fair Meadowlands," looks like a street carnival on steroids. No self-respecting livestock would step foot there.

Excuse me. Can you tell me how to get to the PATH train?

Interestingly enough, the East Rutherford version was a bit closer, geographically, to the first permanent home of New Jersey's premier agricultural exhibition: Newark. Yup, the state's largest city was once the place where farmers and their families learned the latest about livestock and crops, enjoying fun and games while they were at it. Technically, the site of the fair, the current-day Weequahic Park, was in Clinton, an small community that was yet to be absorbed by Newark. In the years before the site became a county park, it was largely farmland, neighbored by marsh instead of apartment buildings, highways and train tracks.

Clinton had a better deserved reputation for breeding mosquitoes than for crop production until James Jay Mapes came to town. A noted scientist with an interest in agriculture, he purchased an unproductive farm there in 1847 as a laboratory for his theories in crop rotation, fertilization and seeding. His work wasn't just successful, it proved the value of scientific agriculture in improving soil quality and crop yield.

Though many farmers had scorned 'book farming' before, the results were undeniable, and Mapes became the closest thing to an agricultural rock star as was possible in the mid 19th century.
Who wouldn't want to boost production on their own acreage, and who better learn from than the master himself? Mapes took to the speaking circuit, drawing on his considerable wit and speaking skills to present over 150 lectures on scientific farming. He also patented and sold his phosphate fertilizer branded as, what else, "Mapes Fertilizer."

The farm in Clinton became a popular draw for knowledge-hungry farmers, so much so that in 1866, the organizers of the New Jersey state agricultural fair chose it as the event's permanent site. Besides the usual seminars, shows and competitions, farmers and their families could enjoy food, drink, shows and games of chance at the newly-dubbed Waverly Fairgrounds. The grandstand and racing oval constructed for the fair proved so durable that it stood until 1960, evolving from a horse track to automobile racing.

Clinton's days as the capital (at least for a few days a year) of New Jersey agriculture ended in 1899, as Essex County amassed several tracts of land to become present-day Weequahic Park. The last bits of the township were annexed to Newark in 1902, completing a process that had gone back and forth for close to 70 years. In any case, the years of moos, manure and midways were over for the park, but it would later host significant events, including a celebration of the city's 250th anniversary in 1916.

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.

Exploring the nation's first county park... in Newark

As we've traveled the state, we've been impressed by the consistently good quality of New Jersey's county parks. In the more urban areas, particularly, they offer residents a place to enjoy open space, recreation and perhaps a bit of nature not far from their own front doors. You could say that they're a common community back yard.

What I didn't realize was that the nation's very first county park is in New Jersey. The land that's now Branch Brook Park in Newark's North Ward was dedicated to its current use in 1895, instantly turning an old Civil War Army training ground into the forerunner of the open spaces we all enjoy today.

Well, "instantly" is a bit of an exaggeration. The original plot was partially a marsh called Blue Jay Swamp, which had become both a source of drinking water and a dumping place for sewage after it was deemed unsuitable for development. Further adding to the rather depressing scene, the tract was hemmed in by crowded tenements. This was balanced, somewhat, by the addition of a more pristine 60 acres that the City of Newark sold to the county for park use. Before the land transfer, it had been known as Reservoir Park in recognition of the basin that had supplied water to the city's more privileged residents.

The concept of a great park had actually been hatched in 1867, when the New Jersey Legislature created a Newark Park Commission to determine a place for open space within the rapidly-developing city. Already well known for their work in other cities, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux recommended using much of what's now Branch Brook Park, but it took several years before the idea could come to fruition.

A small sample of the famed Branch Brook Park
 cherry blossoms

During the initial planning phases, the county hired landscape architects John Bogart and Nathan Barrett in 1895 to design a park replete with formal gardens, but that plan was scrapped just five years later when the Olmsted firm was hired. Though its founder had already retired due to poor health, his sons shared his more naturalistic approach to park planning, evident in Branch Brook's lovely meadows, fields and rambling paths. Several prominent Newark residents contributed adjacent land, growing the park to its current size of almost 360 acres. Brewery family scion Robert Ballantine added his own flourish with a grand entrance gate at Lake Street and Ballantine Parkway.

The most notable gift, however, is the one which continues to draw thousands of people specifically to see it every spring spring. It's the park's stunning array of nearly 4000 blossoming cherry trees, a collection larger than that planted along Washington D.C.'s Tidal Basin. Caroline Bamberger Fuld, a member of the city's department store dynasty, started the display with a gift of 2000 Japanese cherry trees in 1927. Planted in the same motif as they would be arranged in their native country, the Branch Brook trees stand beautifully against the park's sloped terrain. While several succumbed to the elements over the years, they've been replaced and augmented with even more trees since 2006, raising the total to nearly 4000.

Whether you decide to go during the cherry blossom festival or another time of year, the four-mile long, quarter-mile wide park offers beautiful views and a nice walk on a weekend afternoon. Its charms are well-recognized, too: the American Planning Association recently named Branch Brook Park as one of the Great Public Spaces for 2013. And if you decide to take a look for yourself, you can get there easily via another Hidden New Jersey favorite, the Newark City Subway.