Safety Follows Wisdom in Alpha

It's a January 1 tradition with us: get up early (yes, early), head out to a targeted spot and find as many birds as possible to start off a brand new year list. This time around, we started the search in Warren County, since Ivan anticipated that foraging snow buntings would be easily visible on some of the farm fields near Carpentersville. The snow cover presumably would force the flock to concentrate toward the cleared edges of the road rather than spreading out over a broad expanse of farm fields. Plus, we could also stop by Round Valley, Spruce Run and Merrill Creek for waterfowl and various wintering songbirds. Somewhere in the mix, there'd be something else of note; I didn't know what, but I was confident.

The farms offered a bit of a mixed bag. While we found a big flock of horned larks near the side of the road and snow geese overhead, buntings were frustratingly absent, and nary a kestrel was patrolling the fields. Chalking the results up to the unpredictability of nature, we went on our way, with a detour to grab some coffee and fill the tank.

We've been to the area plenty of times, but it was the first time we've stopped in the small commercial area of Alpha, so I had an eye out for the new and unusual. The roadside didn't disappoint. Not far away from the Quick Chek, we passed a large stone slab, about seven feet tall, standing proudly at a street corner. It looked kind of dampish in places, the way concrete tends to when there's been precipitation recently, but I could make out some lettering beneath a relief sculpture and the legend "Safety Follows Wisdom." Bingo! We pulled over and I jumped out to investigate.

Closer inspection revealed that the marker was an award recognizing Vulcanite Portland Cement Company for a perfect worker safety record in 1930. Only thing was, the Vulcanite Company was nowhere to be seen. Had the award outlived the business? And what was the origin of the award? We'd found a nice little research project.

We already knew that Warren County was a good location for cement companies, due to the availability of good quality lime, a core component of the building product. You'll recall that Thomas Edison's Portland Cement plant operated in nearby New Village, and there's a big cluster of lime kilns in the area, too. Large open-pit quarries reached the mineral easily and inexpensively, making the industry a natural for the location. Edison, in fact, was so high on the potential of cement that he envisioned entire communities of concrete houses built cheaply for working class families. His company and Vulcanite were the two major cement manufacturers in New Jersey.

The big cement slab of Alpha is anchored in the early days of the worker safety movement. Starting in 1912 and well before the enactment of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the Portland Cement Manufacturing Association began tracking on-the-job accidents and fatalities within its members' plants. This led to the creation of programs to encourage worker safety, and eventually to the establishment of an industry award for the plant with the best record in a given year.

For the first several years of the program, winning plants received a trophy to be held until the next awardee was announced, but presumably this wasn't enough to publicly represent the industry's commitment. Something bigger, more permanent could be placed outside the plant gate to remind workers of their achievement and prompt them to keep the safety culture going. The association held a competition for the design of a larger, more permanent and more public monument to be displayed by plants that operated accident-free for a full year. Fittingly, it was to be cast in concrete, with room to recognize subsequent achievements.

The winning design was created by a group of students from the Art Institute of Chicago, with guidance from noted sculptor Albin Polasek. The character on the right is meant to represent Athena, goddess of wisdom, with a lamp to illuminate the path forward for the male figure personifying safety.

The first such monument was awarded in 1924, with the last presented sometime in the 1980s when it was deemed too expensive to hand out seven-foot tall concrete slabs on an annual basis. Google search reveals dozens of nearly identical monuments all around the country, in many places abandoned with the shells of the factories whose employees earned them. The Portland Cement Association still recognizes excellence in safety, but with a much smaller token of esteem.

The Vulcanite company opened in 1894 and appears to have ceased operation in 1941, leaving its monument behind. This would be consistent with the fate of the Edison Portland Cement Company, which closed in 1937 and was dismantled in 1942, a victim of resource shortage. The area's more accessible limestone deposits were being rapidly depleted, leaving only underground deposits that would require expensive shaft mining to extract.

Today, New Jersey has no cement manufacturers, but the work of countless plant workers is memorialized in the durability of the structures cast from their product... and the trophy that stands as testament to their commitment to safety.

Shopping for old lime next to the supermarket on Route 31

A drive down any of New Jersey's older state highways brings an interesting mix of old and new structures, especially in the western parts of the state. Decades-old roadside eateries and supply stores are interspersed with new developments built on acreage that until relatively recently was farmland. It's kind of off-putting to see a brand new big-box strip mall paired with a newish residential development in that environment, but that's the new reality around the state.

The Washington, Warren County lime kilns:
real, or recreated?

Once in a while, though, you get a surprise if you're observant. That was my experience on a recent drive on Route 31 in Warren County. Between a settlement of mega houses and a recently-opened Shop Rite was a stone structure that looked suspiciously like a lime kiln. Was this a real, honest-to-goodness oven that converted limestone to fertilizer, or was it some sort of homage to past industry in the region? 

Longtime readers will recall I ran into several lime kilns during my wanderings in Carpentersville, also in Warren County. While those represent the largest cluster of kilns in the state, they also show their age and are protected from development by an easement granted to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. Conversely, the Washington structure looked way too good, way too well-tended to be legit, and the lawn around it was nicely manicured. I stopped to check it out, but the site was unmarked, leaving no explanation. No doubt, many people probably drive by without knowing what it is or might be.

The mystery was solved when I checked my reliable WPA Guide to New Jersey. Apparently the kiln is completely legit, having operated until 1920, which may explain why it's in good shape compared to many of its counterparts in New Jersey. Its proximity to a major road might have also prevented vandals from defacing it or stealing its cut stone blocks for other uses. 

Today, the Washington kiln looks like a decorative wall built into a hill along a sloping access road to the supermarket. I noticed some landscaping lights that might highlight the structure at night, which seems ironic, now that I think of it. If other kilns have suffered from being illegally dismantled to harvest landscaping brick, there's some justice to this beautifully-intact kiln remaining in place as a desired enhancement to the property.

Checking out both sides of the tracks in Carpentersville

Yesterday I returned to the site of one of our more disappointing winter adventures in Pohatcong Township, hoping for better luck.

See, we'd gone there the day after one of this winter's rare snows, only to find we were barred from the area's chief birding spot because the road wasn't plowed properly. When we tried to find an alternate route, we ended up in the small village of Carpentersville, which appeared to be just a few houses and a couple of public buildings. I didn't think much of it until I looked up at the door to the one-room schoolhouse and saw a large doll just inside, hanging by its neck. That, plus the inordinately large number of POSTED and NO TRESPASSING signs got me thinking that perhaps it wasn't the friendliest place in the world. I took no pictures, though I was really tempted to.

Fast forward to yesterday. The weather was much nicer and I'd spent a total of 10 minutes at Motor Vehicle getting the biannual car inspection, so a road trip was in order. Maybe I could figure out the whole Carpentersville thing.

An hour and a few side trips later, I discovered the doll essentially hasn't moved since January, though there's now an unfriendly sign on the door, banning trespassing and gunning. (Gunning? You mean, using a gun, or revving an engine?). Check it out:

Well, I was there, so may as well do a little driving around. I hit a big "Do Not Enter" area farther down the road the hanging doll was on, so I made a right turn onto River Road. I found myself driving alongside a railroad track mounted on a berm. Several hundred yards down, the road split, the right side going to a gravel company and the left crossing the tracks and skirting toward the river. I went left.

For some crazy reason, it didn't occur to me that it was the Delaware I was seeing. I guess I'd lost my bearings once I left Route 78 and didn't realize how far west I'd gone. At that point, the river isn't anywhere near as wide as it is at the Water Gap, and the houses along the banks were pretty modest.

The train tracks still had me wondering, so I turned the car around and retraced my path in the hopes of discovering something, perhaps an old station. On a previous trip to Phillipsburg, we found a depot for the Belvidere and Delaware Railroad, which now offers occasional leisure rides along the river. Perhaps this was part of it?

River Road dutifully hugged the tracks, much as a tow path accompanies an old canal. Once I got past the little enclave where the hanging doll road intersects River Road, the pavement narrowed and fewer homes lined the way. Soon, the left side of the road was defined by craggy rock about 10 or 20 feet high, and the tracks to my right were looking less and less used. I passed a crew of two workers who appeared to be using picks to clear growth from around the tracks, but then... nothing. At points, the tracks were laid dangerously close to the river; I couldn't help but think that if they were used with any regularity, their owner would have shored them up more firmly. In fact, I have to believe that there's been significant erosion since they were first laid. Who'd take the chance a well-laden freight would tumble into the river?

Not to worry: the road and tracks eventually intersected again, giving the rail route a comfortable distance from the banks. A little farther down and to my left, I saw a few old stone structures built into the hillside, looking very much like furnaces. Research later told me that locally quarried lime was processed here and then shipped out for use as fertilizer and an essential ingredient of cement. To me, however, they looked a lot more medieval, especially the less well-preserved ones. Perhaps someone was inside with a vat of boiling oil? Who knows. It seems to fit well with the slightly unfriendly vibe I felt back in town.