Forging iron, not fright, on Clinton Road

When talking to folks about Hidden New Jersey, we sometimes get suggestions for stories that are more along the "scary" or "spooky" than the historic or natural. We generally leave those to other websites and publications that have a long history of covering them.

But sometimes, there's a convergence -- a site with scare factor that actually has some history attached.

Mention Clinton Road to a large subset of New Jersey explorers, and you're likely to hear a string of stories about scary goings on and late-night encounters with angry, high-beam flashing pickup trucks and shrouded apparitions that may or may have satanic intent. This sparsely-populated, two-lane road winds through several miles of woods in West Milford, attracting scores of adventure seekers who often stop at a small bridge to throw coins at a spirit who, according to legend, will toss them right back.

Our story isn't about any of that.

Nothing's spooky about
the Clinton Furnace.

A while back, Ivan and I took the right turn off Route 23 North and onto Clinton Road, likely in the search for an interesting bird or two, when we came upon a large pile of stone that had been very purposefully set. This wasn't, as the spooky storytellers would have you believe, a Druid temple. Having seen my share of lime kilns and furnaces, I knew we were onto something very old and very industrial.

Indeed, we'd stumbled on the Clinton Furnace, one of a number of old ironworks scattered in the wilderness of Passaic County and neighboring New York State. Scanning the environment, you can see why William Jackson bought about 1000 acres of land there in 1826 to process iron. Two ponds and the nearby Clinton Falls provided ample water and power to operate his planned sawmill and gristmill, and the surrounding forest contained enough timber to make the charcoal that would keep the furnace running.

According to the Friends of the Long Pond Ironworks, Jackson was unable to finish the project and sold the property to a buyer who flipped it to John Winslow and Freeman Wood, the partnership that completed construction in 1833. They operated it as the Clinton Ironworks for three years before selling it to a new owner who ran it sporadically for another year, finally abandoning it in favor of a forge. These being the times before coal was a viable fuel option, it appears that they'd exhausted the local supply of wood for charcoal, forcing the closure of the perpetually hungry furnace. The remaining forge continued operation for about 15 years before it was finally abandoned in 1852, and the property became part of the Pequannock Watershed in 1900, serving as part of the water supply for the city of Newark ever since.  

Clinton Furnace stands today as one of the best preserved ironworks of its kind in northern New Jersey, especially given its location along of the region's most storied "spooky" roads. Patrols from the Newark Watershed Commission have likely discouraged vandals from mischief on the structure, or maybe the tales of satanic rites in the area have put the fear into anyone who might have been inclined to harm the furnace. However, what we see today is just the bottom of the structure; originally an additional 11 feet of brickwork loomed above. 

Our visit elicited nothing but history, but I'd be remiss if I didn't share a postscript on the "spooky" aspects of Clinton Road:

During one of our birding ventures in Sussex County, we crossed paths with a birder who told us he lives just off of Clinton Road. He's very familiar with the legends surrounding the area, particularly the one about the spirit of a small boy who lives under the bridge and tosses back coins thrown to him. Holding up his rather pricey binoculars, the birder noted that over the years, collecting all of those coins has been a rather lucrative hobby for him. Moral of the story: if you've ever been one of those coin throwers, you can rest easy knowing that your pocket change has gone to a good cause.

Nailing it down in Bridgeton

Like many of New Jersey's county seats, Bridgeton walks the thin line between historic and kind of rough around the edges. Some of the buildings downtown are well cared for and restored, while others just look old and a bit rickety, reminding me of what we saw during our visit to Mount Holly. There's a lot of potential in the Cumberland County city, maybe just not enough funding or consistent momentum to follow through quite yet.

To their credit, interested Bridgetonians worked to have portions of the city placed on the National Register of Historic Places, creating the state's largest historic district. More than 2000 buildings stand within the district's boundaries, with notable samples of Colonial, Federalist and Victorian architecture among them. Though they don't have the attention-grabbing quality of having been homes or workplaces of famous Americans, they're remarkable in that they represent the history of an early southern New Jersey industrial town. And with so much history having been torn down in other places in the name of progress, it's remarkable to be able to visit a place where so many older structures remain without being substantially updated, at least on the outside.

After my stop at the Garton Road Shul, I decided to make a pass through Bridgeton and explore whatever caught my eye first. That turned out to be City Park, a 1100-acre tract running along the historic Cohansey River. Though, like the rest of town, it appears to have seen better days, it's a nice spread, with pleasant walking trails, basketball courts, fishing lakes and the Cohanzick Zoo, the state's first municipally-owned zoo. It just needs a bit of the TLC that it seems many municipal budgets can't accommodate these days.

Just beyond the old-fashioned welcome sign on Mayor Aitkin Drive, I came upon an tan clapboard building that looked as if it might be an old park office or clubhouse. A marker notes that the property was the site of the Cumberland Nail and Iron Works, once one of the city's largest employers. The building was the company's office and the last structure remaining from the business.

The glass industry was a dominant force in 19th century Cumberland County, but foundries and other iron-producing ventures found a home in the region, too. Following the establishment of a similar venture in Millville, David and Benjamin Reeves founded the Nail and Iron Works along the shores of the Cohansey in 1815, capitalizing on power from a nearby dam and the availability of Pinelands bog iron.

Over the years and through several changes in ownership, the business grew to line both banks of the river, with nail cutting machinery on one side and a rolling apparatus on the other. In the late 1800s, the foundry employed up to 400 men, with an annual production of 40,000 kegs of nails and 4 million feet of piping. A 1902 directory of iron and steel works says the Cumberland Nail and Iron Works was operating 14 coal and oil-fired furnaces, along with 90 nail machines with an output of 140,000 kegs. By then, its pipeworks had been sold to another company for the production of gas tubing.

It's a challenge to imagine how the site looked when the operation was in full swing, but it must have had some attraction to non-employees, as Bridgeton residents often came onto the Nail and Iron Works property for recreation on the river and the rolling hills above. Ultimately, the city purchased the land and the office building in the 1901-1902 timeframe for use as a public park.

What ultimately happened to the company, it's hard to determine. Was it sold and moved to another location? Did it go out of business? I got no answers from the old building. Tourist guides for the area will describe it as the Nail Mill Museum, reported to hold fascinating artifacts ranging from nails manufactured on site and samples of Bridgeton glass to a model railroad setup. Unfortunately I couldn't check it out because it's been closed for the past few years, with a 2011 county notice to vacate the property still tacked to the front door.

The building may not be accepting visitors, but one of its relics remain fully visible to passers by: what's said to be South Jersey's oldest public clock. Installed in 1830, the large timepiece is embedded in the front wall of the building. It has dials both inside and outside so that company management could see it as easily as the employees hustling past to get to work before starting time. And its two faces reportedly bear the names of two different men: John Whitehead and J.C. Harris, though the Haddonfield-based Whitehead is generally acknowledged as the craftsman who built the clock. As the story goes, Harris, a Bridgeton clock repairman affixed his own name to the inner clock face when he fixed the timepiece.

My sources tell me that the clock is a longcase or grandfather-style, meaning that somewhere within the works, a pendulum helps it keep accurate time. It may have just been a coincidence, but when I was there, it was showing the correct time, taking away the extra hour we leaped forward for daylight saving in March. Even though workers are no longer checking their arrival and supervisors aren't docking for a late arrival, it seems that the spirits of Whitehead and Harris may just be keeping that timepiece running accurately.

Robert Erskine, Ringwood and the West Point chain

We're rather accustomed to finding unusual things on our journeys, but I'm still tickled when a random discovery unexpectedly links up with something I'd seen long ago. Most recently, it wasn't just a link: it was a chain.

The roots of the story are in a trip I made awhile ago to Constitution Island in the Hudson River. While I was there, I learned that the American forces tried a number of approaches to prevent the British Navy from advancing on strategically-important rivers. For example, not far from Fort Mercer on the Delaware, they modified a French system called chevaux-de-frise. It was conceptually the same as those spikes used in toll lanes and parking garages to prevent drivers from backing up in key areas (you know… the ones that puncture your tires if you go in the wrong direction). American General Robert Erskine devised a nautical version that, once sunk across the river, would wreak havoc on the hulls of any ships that dared to cross.

While these spikes were used in the Hudson, the Americans added another blocking mechanism for good measure. Fearing that the British would attempt to sail upriver from their stronghold in Manhattan, they placed a massive chain across the river between West Point and Constitution Island. That portion of the river was already difficult to navigate by ship, and the theory was that slowing traffic even further would provide additional time for the Americans to fire on their opponents from the elevated West Point vantage. From 1778 to 1782, the chain was set out in the spring to block passage, and then removed in the fall to prevent damage from ice in the winter.

Ultimately, the British never tried to get past the chain, though Benedict Arnold reportedly had claimed it could be breached. Some of the massive links were saved, though others were melted down for salvage. I saw a bunch during my visit to Constitution Island, where the anchor point and a short length are preserved near the dock.

What does this have to do with New Jersey? Consider that Washington and his military leadership relied on the state’s significant iron mines and forges for weapons and ammunition, earning the state the sobriquet of Arsenal of the Revolution. The chain had to be made somewhere, and it only made sense that it came from here.

Thing is, while I was fairly certain of that, I wasn’t sure exactly where it was made or where it ended up. Someone had told Ivan that a length of the chain was being used as a decorative border in front of a building near the Wayne/Paterson border, but when we checked it out, I saw that the links were very different from those I'd seen near the Hudson.

A pre-hurricane visit to Ringwood Manor helped to solve the mystery. The Manor, of course, was home to General Erskine, Washington’s chief geographer and surveyor during the war, as well as the operator of the Long Pond Ironworks. His mansion is fronted by several impressive examples of American military history, including the cannon used on the main deck of the U.S.S. Constitution during the War of 1812, and a mortar used during the Civil War. They're both lined up against a massive 25-link length of chain and an anvil. No markers are there to explain the significance of the ironwork, and if you didn’t know better, you’d probably write off the chain as a coarse border or maybe a length that had once tethered an anchor to a ship. I immediately had my suspicions about its provenance, and a bit of research proved it out: it's part of the Hudson chain, come to rest where it was manufactured.

Thing is, when I looked into the history of the Hudson chain a little more deeply, it seems to have many fathers and many origins. Some will tell you that the entire chain was fabricated in New York State, while others will state that various lengths were made in different places and then assembled near West Point. I've also found a reputable source that asserts that the entire thing was made at Erskine's iron works.

What's the real story? I think you know where I stand on the issue, and I'm pretty confident I'm right. I'm not a metallurgist or an expert on 18th century ironworks, but to me, the Ringwood Manor chain looks a heck of a lot like the Constitution Island chain.

Industry among the ruins in Weymouth

Of all the times we've visited Forsythe NWR, Ivan and I had yet to venture west of Route 9 in Atlantic County. This past weekend we headed inland on the Black Horse Pike to check out a couple of old factories we'd heard about.

These weren't factories in the 20th or 21st century tradition ... they were OLD, befitting the development (or lack thereof) of the Pinelands. What many people don't realize is that while there's very little industry there now, the area was a hotbed of production in the early days of the United States.

There's iron in that water!

Our travels took us less than a mile off the Black Horse, on County Road 559 to a smallish park along the Great Egg Harbor River. Well populated on a flawless May afternoon, the site has plenty of older trees to shade the grassy areas, along with the ruins of several old brick structures. A gentle though brisk current brought a few parties of canoers through, but something else about the river caught my attention. While the water was as clear as you'd expect in the Pinelands, the sunlight exposed redness on the river bed. That rust color explains just why the old brick structures are at Weymouth: the presence of iron.

We've talked a lot about the iron mines of the northern reaches of the state, but very little about the south, where bog iron once drove significant industry in the Pinelands. A partnership of five men got state permission in 1801 to dam the Great Egg Harbor River as a power source for an iron works at Weymouth, and within 50 years, the site was host to one of the region's largest communities. Besides a charcoal-fired furnace and forge, industry on the 85,000 acre site included a gristmill, sawmill, blacksmith and wheelwright. A store and Methodist church were also built, along with housing for workers and a large mansion for the forge's owner.

For most of its operating history, the iron forge produced mundane items like nails, pipes, stoves and cooking pots, but it contributed to the nation's defense, too. Weymouth supplied shot and bombs to the army for the War of 1812, though it seems not to have done the same during the Civil War. With the development of the coal industry, Pennsylvania forges could produce better quality iron products, essentially leaving New Jersey in the dust.

Iron processing may have ceased to be an option at that point, but the river continued to power industry at the site. The Atlantic Paper Mill and Weymouth Paper Mill recycled rags, bagging and manila rope to produce paper until wood pulp became more prevalent as the main ingredient for paper products. By 1898, the mills were silent, rendered obsolete by progress.

The property lay unused, buildings decaying and vandalized, until 1966, when the Atlantic County government started buying up the property for inclusion in the park system. Some of the ruins have been fenced in for protection, but you can still reach some of the stabler structures, including the arches that span the largely dry millraces. A cast-brick chimney also stands in stark contrast to the stone foundations of the furnace it once served.

Given the impulses that unfortunately drive some people to destroy history, I have to say it makes sense to surround the Weymouth ruins with a park. Visitors are exposed to a fascinating aspect of South Jersey history as they picnic and canoe through the property, and hopefully that encourages them to learn more. Having people around also tends to deter vandals from acting out.

One resident in particular seemed to be taking extra effort to guard the fenced-in ruins while we were there. Ivan noticed a female Louisiana waterthrush sitting on a branch just above the enclosure, wagging her tail from side to side as if conducting an orchestra. She patiently waited for us to leave, no doubt because she wanted to distract us from her nest. Regardless, it was a nice little surprise, considering we didn't expect much avian activity during the middle of the day.