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.

Calling Fred Flintstone: Mastodons in Cranford!

Based on a favorable scouting report from Birding on the Net, Ivan and I struck out two Sundays ago to see who we'd find near the Deserted Village in Watchung Reservation. We'd gotten a somewhat late start after a long day in Atlantic County, so we weren't sure what, if anything we'd discover. An extensive hike brought us an immature red tailed hawk being hassled by blue jays, as well as orioles, a rose-breasted grosbeak, scarlet tanager and others, but the real find was along the park road on our way out.

Driving Glenside Avenue back to Tracy Road, I saw a temporary lawn sign with the outline of what looked like a hairy elephant. The lettering read "Mastodon. Trailside Nature and Science Center."

A nice chunk of the Cranford mastodon's jaw,
plus a tusk to the rear.

A mastodon? This was a new one on me. The county had completely revamped the museum a few years ago to feature much of the local flora and fauna, but they hadn't added any prehistoric creatures. I couldn't remember seeing any fossils in the old museum, either, so this deserved a special visit. As Ivan noted, sometimes the most hidden history is buried beneath our feet.

That was even truer than we realized. Turns out the mastodon in question was found in one of our stomping grounds, Lenape Park in Cranford. WPA workers were digging an artificial lake there in 1936 when they came upon a tusk and jaw from a young male mastodon. Geology professors from both Princeton and Rutgers came to the site to supervise the excavation of the relics, which they later theorized had been transported from elsewhere as the Wisconsin glacier receded.

While the mastodon who gave us these relics may not have been a resident of what later became New Jersey, the species wasn't a stranger to the state. An 1844 discovery in Hackettstown revealed five full skeletons, and the results of a dig in Mannington in the late 1800s yielded nearly a full mastodon skeleton, now a centerpiece of the Rutgers Geology Museum in New Brunswick. A litany of other discoveries is scattered through much of the state.

Here's the mysterious part of the Trailside exhibit: it mentions additional mastodon finds in Union and Westfield, but the accompanying website states that there's no surviving evidence or scholarly notes on artifacts or their whereabouts. Could it be that someone's hiding a mastodon head in their attic? Could it be a stepping stone in a garden, the way another skull was used in Pemberton before being identified for its paleontological value? Check your backyards and cellars and let us know!

Hiking a sweet spot in the Sourland Mountains

Given how much I've knocked around central New Jersey, it's rather remarkable that it's taken me this long to get to the Sourland Mountains. Located in Somerset and Hunterdon Counties, the range seems to have gotten its name from the fact that the underlying geology can't support a decent well, leaving prospective settlers without a reliable source of water. Other sources say that the name is a corruption of the word 'sorrel,' which the Germans who settled there used to describe the reddish-brown soils in the area.

Despite the water-related drawback, the Sourlands have hosted their share of history. For one, the range played a strategic role during the Revolution, keeping the British to the west from raiding the wheat fields of Hunterdon area farmers. John Hart, one of the New Jersey delegates to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration, hid in the Sourlands for an extended period of time after the British drove him off of his nearby farm. And more recently, Charles Lindbergh selected the area for a remote home for himself and his wife Anne Morrow, seeking to avoid the incessant attention of the press. Unfortunately, the home they built in Hopewell was the site of the kidnapping and death of their first child, Charles, Jr.

Today, both Somerset and Hunterdon Counties maintain open space parks in the region, and Ivan and I chose to visit the Somerset County Preserve on the Belle Meade side. The mountains seem to rise up out of nowhere in the relative flatness of the area, so it wasn't hard for us to get our bearings as we approached on US 206. There's an ample parking area at the traihead off East Mountain Road, along with a kiosk holding maps. Four trails cover about nine miles in total, the longest one rising about 400 feet in elevation as shown on the topographic map. The trail blazes aren't quite as helpful, as they go by geometric shapes rather than color, and the shapes aren't denoted on the map.

We decided to check out part of the five-mile-long ridge trail, since the map showed that it goes through an area called the Devil's Half Acre. Perhaps this is where Mother Leeds' 13th child hangs out on jaunts outside the Pinelands? The trail starts fairly level and includes a few wooden boardwalks before it gets rocky and takes on some altitude. Since it had rained recently, some of the path was muddy and the rocks could be a bit moist, but for the most part, it's a good trail. The preponderance of stones means that there's not too much underbrush encroaching, which was a bit of a relief, since we'd reached our limit on ticks at Negri-Nepote.

While the rise was continuous, it was by no means a scramble as we'd experienced at Pyramid Mountain. If you're accustomed to the rocks, it's an easy route; if not, it offers a satisfying workout. One could see why British soldiers chose not to venture through the area -- it would be a challenge to bring purloined supplies up and over the mountain, and chances would be good that you'd lose a fair bit of it along the way.

It doesn't take long to get to the boulders of the Devil's Half Acre, and the trail winds through interestingly-shaped formations with trees growing somehow through cracks and crevices. Much as you would with clouds in a blue sky, we traded ideas about what the big rocks were shaped like, and we wondered how they'd come to be there. According to the park map, the area consists of Triassic Age sedimentary and igneous rock deposited between 150 and 180 million years ago, when the region was underwater. However they got there, it's fun to walk around, through and over the rock piles. You can definitely see why Hart would have chosen to hide out in the area, if other parts of the Sourlands are as rocky as what we saw.

Once you get past the Half Acre, the trail levels out a bit, dipping and rising more gently than before. Rather than take the full route, we decided to take advantage of one of the connecting trails to truncate the trip and make our way down the mountain to the trailhead.

Finding the Ford Faesch house

Following our unexpected side trip to the Mount Hope Mines, Ivan and I were even more set on finding the Ford-Faesch House in Rockaway, the colonial-era home of the mine's developer, John Jacob Faesch. I'd already done a little research to discover that the house had other historical ties as well. It had been built by Colonel Jacob Ford, who also built the eponymously-named mansion in Morristown that General George Washington had made his headquarters for a time during the Revolutionary War. In fact, the two homes are somewhat similar in layout, but the Morristown estate is whitewashed while the Rockaway home retains its stone faced exterior.

Given that we had some trouble finding the house, it wasn't surprising that Ford had left the house in 1770 for his new and probably much more convenient digs in Morristown. (If you doubt that, consider how close it is to present day Interstate 287.) The Swiss-born Faesch, already known as ironmaster for the Ringwood Mine, was the first of what would eventually be a succession of mine owners and superintendents. He was also a well-regarded patriot, having supplied the Continental Army with munitions. In 1931, the house became a two-family home, remaining inhabited until 1973, when it was put on the New Jersey Register of Historic Sites.

All we knew to look for was an old stone house on Mount Hope Road, and as the pavement curved through suburbia and less populated areas, we began to wonder if somehow it might have disappeared. I'd found an outdated website about the house and hoped restoration was still in the cards, but in the absence of involvement of a major historical organization, you can never be too sure.

Then, the road revealed a broad opening in the wooded boughs and revealed a broad grassy hill topped by a stone house flying an American flag from its front door. The wayside marker revealed it to be... the Ford-Faesch House. Nowadays, it overlooks the entrance to a large quarry facility and a broad body of water. We pulled up and around the back of the house, expecting to find a small parking lot or even an indication of where to enter, only to find nothing. I pulled out and parked down the hill, concerned we'd driven somewhere we shouldn't have.

Returning to the house, we found that restoration appears to be ongoing: there are a few building permits posted on a back window, and a bare bulb lit inside the first floor. Other than that, though, there wasn't much evidence of human habitation. Wandering around the property, we found a large pile of logs configured much like the signal fires the Continental troops had constructed along the Watchungs to warn of enemy approach. It made me wonder if perhaps a historical society occasionally held programs there, but we couldn't find evidence of that, either. From my internet research, it appears that the Historical Society of the Rockaways is responsible for the restoration, upkeep and operation of the house.

Recalling what I'd read in the past about the house, I though there might also be an old, shuttered church nearby, also awaiting restoration. We walked further up the side street and eventually found it, sectioned off in a field across the street from the house and marked with NO TRESPASSING signs. It seemed a bit odd that the church was situated so that its side, rather than its entrance, was facing the street it was visible from. In fact, the entrance was facing an overgrown tract about the size of the house's lot, surrounded by a very well-constructed stone wall that was occasionally broken up by stairways leading into the brush.

A bit of research shows that this was the Mt. Hope Methodist Church, built in 1868. In addition to being a house of worship for both miners and the well-heeled, it also served as a school and, at times, as a hospital. Ultimately, the congregation dwindled to a few families and the building was left to deteriorate and suffer the indignity of vandalism. From what I can find online, it appears that the church was open for visitation as recently as three years ago, but it honestly doesn't look all that inviting now.

As for the tract in front of the church, our best guess is that it might have been the church's cemetery. We walked as far as we could (legally) around the property and couldn't get a clear view in to see any stones or monuments. One wonders who might be resting there.

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...

Down on the Farm: Enjoy Rutgers Ag Field Day this Saturday!

Till now, every Hidden New Jersey entry has highlighted a visit that I've made to a notable location in the state, either with Ivan or on my own. Today I'm breaking with that tradition (tradition? This blog is barely four months old!) so you have the benefit of being able to check out an event I believe no proud New Jerseyan should miss: Ag Field Day at Rutgers' Cook College* campus in New Brunswick, to be held this Saturday, April 30. It's the day when our state university's agriculture and bioscience school opens the doors of the livestock barns and earth science labs for some hands-on introduction to our state's ecology and more.

I've been going to Ag Field Day for nearly 30 years and while some things have changed, many others haven't. Students continue to groom and handle pigs, sheep, cows and more for the livestock judging shows that are held on the morning of the event. You can still stop by the dairy barn to visit the cows, though I never actually got to see the famous fistulated "porthole cow" who by now has gone to the big pasture in the sky. And don't forget to drop by the Food Science Building to get the yummy Food Science ice cream -- probably a total chemical concoction, but a treat, nonetheless. Other Cook College student organizations still gather at Passion Puddle, the campus pond, to educate and raise money. One of my favorites is the Entomology Club, whose members have long offered bug snacks - cookies with real, edible worms baked into them (you don't taste the worm, but its texture leaves something to desire).

Some Cook students take
their studies very seriously,
like Buzz here.

In the time since I graduated, more of the environmental sciences are represented at the day, as well. Students and professors who study New Jersey's evolving land use will show you around the state by way of satellite imagery. Check out the marine science building to touch some of the state's sea life and learn more about the restoration of the shore ecosystem.

The great thing is that there's something for everyone - students, alumni with young kids, and the rest of us who just like stopping by to enjoy a beautiful spring day on the farm. And if you need a break from science, there's always the New Jersey Folk Festival at Douglass College just a short hike away. This year, the festival will be focusing on the Kalmyk people of Central Asia who have settled in Howell and Paterson. One can only hope that there will be throat singing! A host of folk performers and craftspeople also display their talents, with a wide variety of handmade crafts available for viewing and sale. I always find great jewelry at the booths.

The last Saturday in April was long the day when Cook and Douglass would be the places to be on the Rutgers New Brunswick campus, but that's changed with the introduction of Rutgers Day a few years ago. Now the whole university gets into the act with activities and fun on all of the Middlesex County campuses. If you have enough energy after wandering through Ag Field Day and Folk Festival, take the campus bus over to College Ave or the Busch campus to find out what they have to offer. There's always something fun and interesting, and at the very least, you can visit the President's office at Old Queens (the administration building, not the bar on Easton Ave.).

Check it out, and maybe head to Stuff Yer Face afterward. I might just see you there!

*Nitpickers will tell you that it's no longer Cook College, it's the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University, but "SEBS" doesn't quite cut it as a name. And I happen to believe that George Cook is a personage worthy of continued recognition. But I digress... as will many other alumni of a certain vintage who've enjoyed Ag Field Days for lo these many years.

Gneiss try: exploring New Jersey's Stonehenge, Tripod Rock on Pyramid Mountain

You could say that this week's adventure was our rock tour, as we directed our attention away from the birds to check out some freakishly big stones, right in Morris County.

Say "Pyramid Mountain" to folks in the know, and it's inevitable that Tripod Rock will come up. True to its name, this enormous boulder is perched on three much smaller rocks near the top of the mountain. Science tells us that the Wisconsin Glacier brought it to the mountain about 18,000 years ago, and that's just how it was left. It's possible that originally there was sand and other debris under the rock, and it eroded or blew away, leaving only the stones holding it up now.

Pyramid was still wearing healthy bits of snow from the inch or few that fell a few days earlier, so we ran into that and a bit of mud along our hike. That, however, was just one thing to consider when choosing where to put your feet on the trail.

Getting to Tripod, you get a full appreciation of just how much rock that glacier pulled in its path. After a leisurely walk on a fairly even dirt path, you run into a series of scrambles across and between stones of many sizes. I was beginning to regret having brought the binoculars, as I was having visions of them scraping against the rocks as the incline steepened. About two-thirds of the way up, you're finding footholds wherever you can, and perhaps even using nearby saplings as impromptu walking canes as your feet gain purchase on the next step up. In other words, it's a good workout. All told, you're about 800 feet above sea level by the time you get there, having parked the car at about 600.

The Rock is everything they say it

Tripod Rock. To give you some scale,
that's Ivan off to the side, a few feet behind. 

is: really big, and mysterious in its own way.  It and its cousins are known as glacial erratics, and even though the geologic explanation is totally plausible, it's fun to consider other ways that huge boulder may have been deposited on its tripod. Maybe it was aliens? Maybe the natives were freakishly strong? Maybe a Monty Pythonish god-hand descended from the sky to pluck it up like a pebble and set it down again? Just as interesting, there are two much smaller rocks perched similarly just a few yards away. They're arranged in such a way that on the summer solstice, the setting sun's rays shine directly between them onto another rock directly opposite and several feet away. Depending on who you listen to, this is either a natural occurrence and a spiritual energy vortex, or created by the native Lenape tribe as a way to mark the start of summer.

Sure, Tripod offers a nice vista to view the surrounding area, but it's also a great place to get silly pictures, too. I kinda thought that it looked like a big dinosaur head as we approached, as you might be able to see in the first picture. And for those with a bit of hammishness, there's always the chance to show off the results of all those hours at the gym, or even to take on the weight of the world, if you so desire.

Once I'd had a chance to catch my breath and get some of the cosmic waves, we hiked further along the Blue trail to a huge rock formation called Lucy's Overlook, named for the woman who led the effort to save the mountain from developers. Save for the right-of-way for a 500kv electric transmission line and the towers that hold it, the landscape looked blissfully undeveloped. It's definitely a good place to sit a spell and contemplate life and the universe without interruption.

Moving on from the overlook, we took a rocky scramble to a lower elevation and started running into muddy surface again (I'm going to be so thrilled when I run into a dry track!). A few narrow board walks crossed small streams and rivulets, and soon enough, we found the next mega-stone, Bear Rock. True to its name, it's a bare rock. Standing out on its own in a clearing in the forest, it's hard to miss. A smaller yet still sizeable stone rests behind it, perhaps having split off from Bear at some point in the past 10,000 years or so. The smaller one is climbable, giving you another perspective on just how big this thing is.

Farther along the path, there are remnants of a very old house foundation. Whoever built it made ample use of the local rocks, including a large but not enormous boulder. If you look closely enough in several areas of the park, you'll see old stone walls that may have been erected as long ago as the Dutch habitation of New Jersey. Soon enough, we were taking the stepping-stone path across a stream and walking in a clearing along the transmission right of way, gaining and losing elevation in the process.

Once back to the parking lot, we found the visitors center was open for visitation. It's a nice little place to get warm and find out about the flora, fauna and geology of the property, including the sandstone and quartz conglomerate or puddingstone unique to the area. "Gneiss rock," Ivan pointed out, gesturing to a sample stone the same color and texture as Tripod Rock.

Gneiss, indeed.