One if by land... the Revolutionary Watchung Mountain signal beacons

No matter how much we think we know about New Jersey's role in the American Revolution, no matter how many relevant sites we've unearthed in our explorations, there always seems to be a new one around the corner.

Or, in this case, at the corner, as Ivan discovered on a ridge of the Watchung Mountains in Long Hill. Sitting rather innocuously near the intersection of Long Hill Road and Pleasant Plains Road was this plaque on a rock:

So, what's the story?

The Watchungs were strategically crucial during the Revolution, as General George Washington chose the protection of the triple-ridged mountain chain for part or all of four winters during the conflict. Whether he was encamped at Middlebrook in Somerset County or in Morristown, the altitude and safety of the mountains allowed him to keep an eye on the British troop movements across the eastern New Jersey lowlands while guarding the local area and protecting himself from potential kidnap raids.

Ivan points out the fine view of the first ridge
of the Watchungs, to the east of Long Hill.

Once the British were spotted, the news needed to be transmitted to the local militias and to the Continental troops camped in the area. The old Paul Revere* "The British are coming!" method wouldn't quite work with so much ground to cover, leading General William Alexander (Lord Stirling) to a better idea. Capitalizing on the Watchungs' roughly 400 foot altitude, he ordered 23 beacons to be erected at strategic points along the ridge during the spring of 1779. Each was to be constructed as a wooden pyramid with a 14 foot base, using Alexander's precise directions for height and type of logs used. Uniformity was key: if they were to be reliable signals, they had to burn equally as well and put out an adequate volume of smoke to be visible for long distances during the day.

The beacons were used several times to call out the militia to ward off the British, including the June 1780 battles of Connecticut Farms and Springfield. They served their purpose: while the Redcoats made several raids in the eastern lowlands, they were never able to reach the Watchungs or Washington.

After the war, the signals were mostly forgotten, only a few commemorated with markers, leaving us to wonder exactly where they were located. Papers belonging to Governor William Livingston identified the men responsible for lighting some of the Somerset County beacons, leading historians to wonder if those signals were located on or near those patriots' homes. If that theory holds true, the Long Hill beacon may have been the responsibility of Morris County Militia Colonel Cornelius Ludlow, who lived in the home just across Pleasant Plains Road from the marker Ivan found.

In any case, we've got a new quest on our hands: finding 22 New Jersey beacon sites. Have you seen them, and if so, where?



* Or, for true Revolutionary War trivia lovers, Sybil Ludington.

Washington back across the Delaware? Piecing out a mosaic in Titusville.

Every once in a while, we get an interesting story by means of our readers. This is one of them. It gets a little convoluted, so stick with me.

In the midst of telling the story of the first Civil War re-enactment at a recent speaking engagement, I mentioned one of the key attendees, Major General Dan Sickles. He wasn't a New Jerseyan, but his reputation as a colorful character only proved the point that the organizer of the reenactment, Sussex County's own Major General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, threw one heck of a party. To illustrate Sickles' general attitude toward life, I mentioned that when his leg was amputated after an injury sustained during battle, he donated it to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, DC and would visit it on the anniversary of its removal.

A few of the program attendees chuckled knowingly, so I figured we had a few Civil War buffs in the audience. Nope -- even better, as I discovered when they came up to chat after the program was over. They didn't just know about Dan Sickles; they were related to him. We had a few laughs over some of the stories, and the fact that they'd admit being related to such a scamp. One thing was clear: they had a real interest in the ways that good stories become history.

Hours later, they reached out to me with a lead on a historic marker in Titusville that seems to carry a bit of mystery on its own.

Now, there's no lack of historic markers in Titusville, given the location's status as the site where George Washington and his troops landed after they crossed the Delaware in 1776. If you leave the community's boundaries without understanding how crucial the spot is in the story of our nation, there's no way you can pin blame on the locals. However, the marker the Sickles descendants mentioned doesn't explicitly mention Washington's crossing. Rather, it's a large stone with two elements: a brass plaque dedicated to the members of the Union Fire Company and Rescue Squad, dated 1976, and a colorful stone mosaic of someone we're assuming is supposed to be George Washington.

Here it is. You be the judge:

To make matters even more interesting, it stands not on the road for all to see as they drive down Route 29, but in the parking lot behind the Union Fire Company building. The artwork isn't dated, but it appears to have been completed long before 1976, and certainly well before the newish firehouse was erected. It clearly was moved from another site.

According to the Sickles descendants, that's exactly what happened. The mosaic had originally stood in front of the old Washington Hotel on Route 29, which was a resort of sorts for visitors who came by way of the Delaware-Belvidere Railroad to enjoy a few days in the countryside along the historic river. Apparently created by an experienced German-born tile maker who lived in the community, the mosaic might have been commissioned by the hotel to further honor the hero the inn owners had named their establishment for.

As the story goes, the stone and mosaic stood proudly in front of the hotel until World War I, when anti-German sentiment prompted vandals to push it off its base and roll it across the road and into the Delaware and Raritan Canal. There it sat until the 1970's, when it was fished out by firefighters and again given a place of honor.

Now, consider the ironies: honoring the memory of Continental troops crossing the Delaware to take on the Hessians in Trenton, a hotel in Titusville commissions a German American to create a likeness of General Washington. Years later, presumably patriotic Americans express their anger in war by figuratively giving the likeness the old heave-ho into the nearest approximation of the Delaware. And I hear about this from folks whose military forebear was known for his own special brand of mischief.

Whether Washington or Sickles would appreciate the story is up for conjecture, but I think we can all feel better knowing that the Father of our Country wasn't sent totally back across the Delaware out of anger against a distant enemy. One trip was enough.

Thanks to Cathy (Sickels) Fortenbaugh and Peter McGrath for the lead!

Look both ways before you cross: Newark's groundbreaking school safety patrols

Back a few years ago, our visit to Newark's Military Park revealed that America's first school safety patrol was established in New Jersey's largest city in May 1916. According to a commemorative plaque placed by the Schoolmen's Club, Newark Schools Attendance Supervisor Charles MacCall and Officer Felix Dunn of the city's police department recommended that the board of education start the patrol to make sure that children learned to cross the street safely on their way to and from school.

What sounds like a pretty obvious concept now -- why wouldn't a kid know to wait to cross the street until cars passed or came to a stop for them -- wasn't at the time. Automobiles were a fairly recent phenomenon, and as traffic increased, the simple act of crossing the street became fraught with potential injury. Guard stationed at intersections and crosswalks would make sure kids passed safely while drumming the "look both ways, then cross" mantra into their brains. The Newark program brought it one step further by enlisting students as guards, perhaps thinking that kids would be more likely to listen to their peers.

In researching the program, I found that the school safety patrol concept, like many good ideas, has been claimed by many parents. It took a while for me to find a non-Schoolmen's reference that placed citing the birth of Newark's program before others. Some branches of the American Automobile Association claim that AAA originated the idea in 1920, while cities like St. Paul, Minnesota proudly state that their safety programs took root in the early 1920s.

To be fair, AAA once recognized that safety patrols seem to have sprung up in many areas at around the same time. A 1940 New York Times article said that the organization was attempting "to find and to honor the far-sighted leaders who pioneered the movement." By then, 300,000 children had donned the familiar safety patrol belts to help to keep their peers safe from oncoming traffic.

Even the originators of the Newark movement seem to be in question. A 1949 obituary states that Eugene Sheridan, not MacCall, was the public schools attendance bureau director who came up with the idea and worked with Dunn to implement it. I haven't been able to clear up the discrepancy, but I discovered that Sheridan was lauded by the AAA as one of several pioneers at a massive safety patrol parade in Washington, DC in 1941. By the time he retired, almost 3400 Newark youngsters were serving as guards, and no fatal accidents had occurred at any of the patrolled intersections or crosswalks since the start of the program.

Dunn headed the Newark School Safety Patrol from its formation in 1917 until his retirement in 1930, and while he did so much to ensure childrens' safety on the road, his family was touched by a car accident. In 1933, he was driving with his wife from Fort Lauderdale to Newark when a tire on their car blew out and the car overturned. Mrs. Dunn died from her resulting injuries, while Mr. Dunn suffered only minor injuries.

History revised, Cornwallis redirected: Closter Landing and the times that try mens' souls

After a visit to the State Line Lookout hawkwatch in Palisades Interstate Park, we took an exploratory drive literally down the cliff to Alpine Landing. Once known as Closter Landing or Closter Dock, this sea-level portion of the park offers easy access to the Hudson River and once served as a terminal point for ferries traversing between New Jersey and New York. It also provides an interesting lesson in the ways history can become distorted or revised, based on faulty information or the passage of time.

Mistakes were made...

According to an old historic marker at the base of the Palisades, the British took advantage of this favorable landing spot on November 18, 1776, starting the chain of events which resulted in the evacuation of Fort Lee (the military installation, not the town) and Washington's retreat across New Jersey into Pennsylvania. You might recall that we covered this unhappy turn of events after our visit to New Bridge Landing last year. Once across the Hudson, the troops were said to have taken a stone paved road up the embankment, then turning south to reach Fort Lee. What's more, their commander, General Lord Cornwallis, is said to have appropriated a nearby house and tavern for his headquarters. Some even said that the tavern's owner, Rachel Kearney, served beverages to Cornwallis as he plotted his troops' next moves.

The house and the road are still there, but the story is off by a distance and a few days. As a much newer, adjacent waymarking sign states, the actual date was November 20, and scholarship now proves that Cornwallis' troops landed at a place known as Huyler's Landing about a mile to the south. The timing error, it seems, may have been due to some hasty record-keeping by a British officer. In any case, the nearby road was no doubt used by generations of travelers and locals who plied the river, but it most likely was not trod by invading Redcoats.

The Kearney House, awaiting post-Sandy restoration.

It's doubtful that the house's history includes a general's stay, and Mrs. Kearney wasn't born until 1780, four years after the British crossed the Hudson that November. She and her second husband, James Kearney, didn't move into the home until 1817. Still, historians have it on fairly reliable word that Rachel converted the family home to a tavern after James' death in 1831, eventually building an addition to accommodate more business and lodgers. It was a savvy move, as the site was landing point for many river travelers and even hosted a steam-powered oat and coffee mill starting in the 1860s. The tavern kept rivermen fed and in good spirits until it was purchased by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission in 1907 as part of a larger plan to preserve the Palisades and build a public recreation area.

Today, the Kearney house stands as a reminder of habitation and industry at Alpine Landing, though it currently wears the evidence of 21st century intervention. The small white wood and stone structure was inundated by floodwaters during Hurricane Sandy, and plywood covers the lower windows as well as a large hole in a lower wall. Restoration is underway, based on the meticulous documentation the Commission has done of the building over the past century. Fortunately, the park and volunteers anticipated the potential for flooding and moved many artifacts to the upper floors before the storm, though other pieces were later retrieved from various spots on the landing where the storm had deposited them.

Ambush at River Vale: the Baylor massacre

After an impromptu trip to Lake Tappan, Ivan and I found ourselves wandering just north of the state border in New York, looking for the site where British intelligence officer Major John Andre was hanged during the Revolutionary War. The town of Tappan has done a lovely job of retaining a historical air, and we couldn't help but do some light exploring around the yard of the Reformed Church. Among the aged and faded Colonial-era markers, we found something a bit more modern, with a New Jersey connection.

This was one I hadn't heard about, so I took a quick photo and made a note to look it up once we returned to Hidden New Jersey HQ. Might this ambush be something like the Hancock's Bridge massacre that had taken place in Salem County in March 1778? With so little data, all we could do was conjecture as we headed back home through the back roads of upper Bergen County.

The Baylor Massacre memorial and grave site.

As the Hidden New Jersey fates seem to determine sometimes, it wasn't long before we found ourselves passing a sign saying "Baylor Massacre burial site" and pointing to a park in River Vale. This coincidence was too, well, coincidental for us not to stop and investigate. What we found was a wooded park with memorials and a series of interpretive signs that tell the story of the area in Colonial times, the personalities involved, the massacre itself, and the archaeological work that's been done on site. We quickly found ourselves engrossed in an event which, while small in the overall scope of the Revolution, brings the horror of war home, to suburbia.

The Third Continental Light Dragoons hailed from Virginia and were led by 26 year-old Colonel George Baylor, a former aide-de-camp of General George Washington. They had little if any battle experience, being used primarily for reconnaissance and escort. In fact, Baylor's regiment was known as Lady Washington's guards in recognition to their service to the future first lady. As such, they were also lightly armed with sabers and a few pistols.

During the summer of 1778, the Third Dragoons were stationed in Paramus while Baylor's second in command, Major Alexander Clough, worked the area for intelligence and to recruit spies. When the British began to forage the area for food and supplies in late September, Washington ordered Continental troops to protect the area in an arc reaching from Newark into New York State. Baylor took quarter in a home on the main road through what's now River Vale, and his men took shelter in barns and other structures nearby.

From all appearances, they had no knowledge that British General Lord Cornwallis was planning to lure Washington and his troops into a battle. On the evening of September 28, 1778, Baylor's 104 enlisted men were fast asleep in several barns when they were ambushed by troops led by Major General Charles Grey. The attackers struck by surprise, and few if any dragoons in one barn could hear disturbances from another under siege, since Grey had instructed his troops to use bayonets rather than firing their flint-lock muskets.

The British acted with malicious savagery, spurred on by their commander's reputation for cruelty. Many dragoons were said to have been bayoneted repeatedly despite their cries of surrender, and Congressional investigation later determined that 11 were killed on the spot while 37 others managed to escape. The officers met a similar fate. Discovered in the house where they were staying, one was slashed to death while Baylor himself sustained injuries that continued to manifest until his death at the age of 32, six years later. Those troops who survived the night were brought to a makeshift hospital and prison within the church at Tappan, the site where Ivan and I originally discovered the story.

Originally the site of a tannery, the property apparently had eventually lain fallow for nearly 200 years, its history forgotten once a commemorative marker and the mill stone were removed. The remains of some of the murdered dragoons were said to have been entombed in tanning vats on the property, but their exact location was unknown. It was an unfortunate end for patriots who'd given their lives for our young country, but at least their final resting place was a placid one, near the meandering Hackensack River.

Their peace was threatened in the late 1960s, when a builder made plans to subdivide the tract for a housing development. Local citizens raised the alarm, and the county hired three college students to research the claims, interview older residents who remembered accounts of the massacre, and dig within the site for any evidence that would support the assertion that soldiers were buried there. The team ultimately found six skeletons, a belt buckle and other artifacts, confirming the importance of the site.

While the names of the found six dragoons are lost to history, their resting spot and story thankfully are not. The local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a commemorative marker to mark the spot where the soldiers' remains were reinterred, and the original tannery mill wheel was returned to the location, as well. And, of course, the acreage remains wooded and quiet, destined to never be marred by a developer's backhoe.

Cat Swamp and silk: big crime in Byram reveals a mystery

If I were to teach kids anything about history, it's that we should never make assumptions. Take historic markers, for example. Admittedly, they're often pretty dry, and usually they're really predictable. But then there are those like the Hunterdon County sign for the birthplace of Liver Eating Johnson, which are the catnip that keep you checking in the hopes of finding something unexpected.

Case in point: the marker for the Cat Swamp Hijacking and Murder. Blink and you'll miss the sign as you travel south on Route 206 in Byram. It's on the shoulder of the highway, next to a narrow road that leads into the woods. Ivan and I had driven past it a bunch of times without stopping, but this time, I kept an eye out for it when I was traveling north, just so I could slow down and pull over to read it on my return trip. I'm glad I did, too, because it raised a new question that has nothing to do with the crime itself.

Before I get ahead of myself, here's the sign:

A couple of things here: first off, the name Cat Swamp is pretty atmospheric and cool, especially when you consider how hydrophobic cats usually are. Second, it's not often you see a sign announcing a crime. I'd say that given the remoteness of the area and the size of the take, this was probably huge news in Sussex County in 1921.

The sign itself is pretty self-explanatory, but a little extra digging revealed that six masked hijackers came upon the silk truck so quickly that the drivers didn't have a chance to pull out the guns they carried. Apparently silk transport was a dangerous business. While the drivers were merely marched into the woods, tied up, robbed of their money and the truck, unfortunate motorcyclist Albert Koster was killed for simply riding by the scene. He might have been mistaken for a police officer since it seems that at the time, the majority of people who rode motorcycles were law enforcement. However, the state police hadn't yet been organized or trained at the time of the incident. Either way, the hijackers took Koster as a threat. After shooting him, the criminals threw him into the swamp face down, to ensure he would die before being found.

The sign also somewhat minimizes the police work done to bring the killer hijackers to justice. Not only were they captured, but Franklin Police Chief Herbert Irons engaged in a dramatic gunfight with one of them before the criminal's capture. And besides the two who were executed for murder, the four other hijackers were sentenced to life imprisonment, later commuted to twenty to thirty years of hard labor.

All in all, the story would make a good movie plot, but I was left wondering about the origin of the hijacked vehicle and its owner, Sussex Print Silk. Why was it so far from Paterson, the much better known Silk City?

It seems that Sussex Print Silk had its roots in Paterson, having been started by English immigrant Thomas Bentley. He and his parents settled in the city on their arrival to the United States, and by the time young Bentley was 25, he'd gotten sufficient training to go into business for himself. His eponymously named company grew over the years and changed names as he took on different partners.

For reasons that aren't clear, Bentley moved the company to the newly built Sterling Silk Mill in Newton in 1895. His manufacturing had previously been housed in a Paterson mill destroyed by fire in 1891, but the loss still doesn't explain why he'd rebuild a sizable distance away from a large city and skilled workforce. The Sussex County seat was already home to manufacturers of shoes, forks and boxes, but unlike Paterson, there was no reliable source of hydropower for cheap energy. Instead, coal was brought in by railroad to power steam engines.

Perhaps Bentley moved his operations to avoid the perpetual labor unrest in Paterson, but he brought several of his skilled employees up to Newton to train workers at the newly built mill. And as it turned out, the 45 miles between Paterson and Newton weren't enough to render Bentley immune from labor action: weavers at the Sterling Mill went on strike for close to a month in early 1900.

Bentley himself moved to a newly-built mansion at 93 Main Street in Newton in 1899 and was actively involved in the community. By 1923, however, he was living in New York to be closer to business interests, and at retirement he moved back to Paterson, living there until his death in 1932.

As for the silk mill, it continued under various owners until about 1950, with periodic work stoppages caused by labor unrest. The building itself was demolished in 1993. The only overt sign of Bentley still in Newton appears to be his mansion, which has been converted to offices after having served as an Elks Lodge.

So... we're left with yet another mystery: what made Newton so attractive to Bentley that he moved his silk business there? Or perhaps the question is what made Paterson so unattractive to him? The answer could be somewhere in another Hidden New Jersey adventure... or perhaps you might know?

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.

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.

Way too big to misplace (but we did): hunting for the Paulinskill Viaduct

Sometimes it pays to keep old stuff in the car. You never know when you'll need it.

Longtime Hidden New Jersey readers know that we count on a few key reference materials during and after our forays into the field. Ivan's got his birding manuals, and my bible, of sorts, is the WPA Guide to 1930s New Jersey. You know there's potential for a good story if you locate something that was listed in a travel guide more than 70 years ago.

That's especially true in Northwestern New Jersey, where a lot of stuff is still where it was back then. We were counting on that when we stopped near Andover-Aeroflex Airport the other day to get our bearings. While Ivan did some light birding, I checked the WPA Guide for the next destination.

Bingo. I found "the Lackawanna RR Cutoff, 110 feet high and stretching for three miles across Pequest Valley. Built just prior to the World War, it helped to reduce the main line distance by 11 miles."

That, I was pretty sure, referred to a portion of the Paulinskill Viaduct, a well-known but well-hidden engineering marvel of its day. With soaring arches supporting the rail line between Hoboken and Scranton, it was, at its construction in 1911, the largest structure built using cast concrete. It hasn't supported train traffic since 1984, but it's gained a fan base among urban explorers. And, well, it's historic. I'd been there before, but Ivan hadn't, so it was worth a look. The thing is massive, and it comes out of nowhere, like a mirage in the woods.

My recollection was that it was just off one of the north-south roads north of Route 80, but I couldn't remember if it was 206 (which we were on) or 94. We decided to find out. The Guide said there was something there, so what the heck.

Only thing was, we couldn't find it. Somewhere around the prescribed mileage, we found a side road that turned and paralleled 206, so we took that. Nothing approaching the magnitude of the Viaduct appeared. Frustrated, Ivan did some backroads driving until the road took a tunnel through what appeared to be a very large hill. This is what we saw on the other side:

Be sure to click on this photo for the full story. 

I have to admit that my favorite part of the whole story is where the school got buried during construction and the kids cheered.

The sign confirmed what the Guide had told us, but it indicated nothing about the viaduct. It wasn't easy to see where the cutoff headed, or where the track had been, because the whole embankment was overgrown.

If you didn't know better, you'd have no idea
there'd ever been a train line atop that embankment.

Like a bloodhound hot on the trail, Ivan was focused on getting to the Viaduct, come hell or high water. I would have been content to let it go, but he was a man on a mission. Figuring I'd try to help somehow, I remembered the one document in the car that might help: his 1976 Bicentennial New Jersey roadmap. Surely it would show rail routes on it. Even if they weren't precise, the markings would give us an idea of where to go.

Yes, indeed, the map showed the route of the Lackawanna Railroad, so yes, I had to apologize for all of the times I've made jokes about keeping 35 year-old maps in the car.

The map also made me realize the best thing might be to get additional help from something a little more modern: my smartphone. A few taps later, and the ugly truth came out: the viaduct is off of Route 94 outside of Knowlton, just a few miles north of Route 80. Mea culpa. I relayed the unfortunate news and we headed along back roads to get there. After reaching 94, we drove a bit until I saw a familiar-looking one-lane bridge off the northbound side.

"There it is," I exclaimed. The bridge takes you to a narrow road and through the woods until... there it is, towering high above.

Now, summer isn't really the best time to see the viaduct, hidden as it is among the trees. My last trip had been during springtime, and even then the foliage obscured the full majesty of the thing. Still, though, you have to admit it's pretty amazing, sitting out there like Brigadoon in the mist.

According to some sources, New Jersey Transit plans to use the Viaduct for passenger travel between Hoboken and Scranton, starting as early as 2014. For now, though, the structure is the dominion of urban explorers and graffiti artists.

After we found the viaduct, I couldn't help but wonder why it wasn't mentioned in the WPA Guide. The reinforced concrete arches are infinitely more impressive than the big berm that crushed the schoolhouse outside of Andover, so what gives?

A little bit of research revealed what's probably the answer: 94 didn't exist yet. According to Wikipedia, that state highway wasn't commissioned until the 1950s, well after the Guide was published. Perhaps the arches weren't as easy to find as they are now (and I say that with tongue planted firmly in cheek), simply because the road wasn't built yet. It's really kind of a shame. I'd think that the New Jersey explorers of the 30s and 40s would have enjoyed seeing it as much as we did, and even more with a train on top!

Who belongs to Newark's Schoolmen's Club, and are they still around?

Not far from Newark's Liberty Pole are a few more historic markers of varying ages and topics. Like the Pole marker, at least one bears the curious legend of being erected by the Newark Schoolmen's Club, with the assistance of the pupils of the city's public school system.

I haven't been able to find very much about the Schoolmen's Club, but the website Old Newark describes the organization this way:

Look closely at the bottom of this marker,
and you'll see an acknowledgement
of the Newark Schoolmen's Club

"To inspire the future with a record of the accomplishment of the past, the Schoolmen's Club assisted by the pupils of the Newark Public Schools has, since 1911, celebrated "Newark Day" each year by placing in certain prominent or hallowed locations tablets of enduring bronze commemorating significant events and outstanding personages in the rich history of our city, the "town on the Pesayack" founded in 1666."

Wow... one would hope that the Schoolmen might have gotten the author of that passage a primer on run-on sentences. I ran out of breath just typing that.

A Google search revealed that the organization had published a book that contained all of the information immortalized on the bronze plaques placed around town. The idea was that "the children of Newark, like the Athenian youth shall leave our city not only not less but greater and better than it was transmitted to them." A noble intent, indeed.

The Old Newark website only lists plaques up to 1941. However, the final word on the group may just have come from Charles Cummings, who was, until his death, Newark's official historian. In one of the series of columns he wrote for The Star Ledger, he chronicled the many memorials and statues downtown, also mentioning the Schoolmen's Club. According to the 2004 story, the group had erected historical tablets until "just recently." Whether that means they stopped after the turn of the century or many years before, it's hard to tell.

It's admirable that an organization was so imbued with civic pride that they'd make the effort to uncover history and then raise sufficient funds to cast it in brass and post it for all to see. Newark's nearly 350 years of existence have been both tumultuous and productive, and I doubt anyone with knowledge of its history would deny there's a lot to trumpet. I wonder how many of the Schoolmen's plaques are still within view of the general public? I have to believe that a few of the old office buildings have them hanging on their exterior walls.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out whenever I go downtown.

Another sock on a stick: Newark's Liberty Pole

We've paid scant attention to the historic charms of New Jersey's largest city, Newark, and that's something we need to remedy. Founded in 1666, it's rife with all kinds of great hidden history, which hit us like a brick when we visited Military Park at the intersection of Broad Street, Park Place and Raymond Boulevard. The tip of the property has to hold the state record for density of brass plaques. I saw four without even really trying.

The one that caught my eye first is on a slab of stone in front of a flag pole which is, itself, flanked by two vintage cannons. Apologies for the off-centeredness of the shot:

Unlike the Liberty Pole erected in Englewood, the first Newark version seems a bit, well... late. Waiting to put one up until the war was won is a bit like, well, becoming a Giants fan after this year's Super Bowl. My guess is that patriotic post-Revolutionary Newarkers were caught up in the spirit of independence and wanted a traditional symbol to represent their feelings.

The date of the first pole placement is telling: July 3, 1793, the eve of the 17th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. According to my research, the pole was a centerpiece for the community's July 4 celebration, topped by a red cap of liberty. The day started with the firing of cannons on either side of the pole (the same as those flanking it today? I don't know.), and the parade that followed was headed by another liberty cap.

By that time in American history, partisan politics were already seeping into government, and the Newark celebration was one of many that seem to have been politically motivated. George Washington had begun his second term as president just a few months before, and many were unhappy with his Federalist tendencies. Raising the liberty pole and cap was a way for those with more Republican-Democratic views to express their preferences, absent a truly organized set of political parties. I guess you could say that the Fourth of July party was as organized as they got, and it's likely that many Newarkers just wanted to use the pole as a rallying point for revelry.

An internet search reveals no specific reason for the timing of a replacement to the pole in 1906, so your guess is as good as mine on that. The Thanksgiving date loosely correlates to Evacuation Day in New York City, which commemorates the day the British left for good after occupying the city for much of the Revolutionary War. The Manhattan Liberty Pole was the focus of revelry there, but that tradition had largely gone by the wayside in the late 1800s.

Newark's hidden-in-plain-sight Liberty Pole leads me to wonder if other New Jersey communities are sheltering similar poles, perhaps unknowingly. Anyone have a lead for us?

We'll stick with freedom, thanks: Englewood's Liberty Pole

Killing time before meeting another couple for dinner, Ivan and I strolled down Palisades Avenue in Englewood recently, on the off chance we'd find something interesting, or maybe just a store to browse. A few blocks down, the World War monument at Lafayette Avenue caught his attention, while my eyes were drawn just past it. You guessed it -- I spied a blue New Jersey tercentennial marker, with a Bergen County historical plaque next to it. Not far from it was a distinctive 1776 Retreat Route sign.

It was a trifecta I couldn't pass up, even if it meant dodging cars on two busy streets. We've all got our weaknesses, right? Ivan may want to spend hours waiting out a rare scissor-tailed flycatcher, but I'm loathe to pass up a good story.

In my excitement, I'd barely noticed the reason for the signage: a beat-up pole with another marker featuring a profile of George Washington and captioned "Washington's March November 21-22, 1776." We already knew about the American retreat from our visit to New Bridge Landing, but it didn't explain why this precise spot was of any significance.

The marker was a bit cryptic, but it told the basic story. A liberty pole was raised there to commemorate the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, plus the spot had seen its share of troop movements. Washington had led the Continental Army past the pole during the retreat from Fort Lee, followed by British troops that also returned two years later. The sign also said that Washington had used the area as his headquarters sometime in 1780, accompanied by Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton and General Anthony Wayne.

That's all fine and good, but what makes a flagpole a liberty pole? The answer is in the intent. Englewood's pole was just one of several put up in the American Colonies as a sign of independence after the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766. Legend has it that the pole was raised by the fiercely patriotic owner of a nearby tavern, and topped with a cap reminiscent of the one that the goddess Liberty is often portrayed as wearing. The act is reflected in the New Jersey state seal, where Liberty is holding a staff topped by a floppy cap. If you've ever looked at our flag and wondered why she's grasping a stick with a sock on the top while Prosperity gets to hold a cornucopia, there you go.

During colonial times, the Sons of Liberty or disgruntled townspeople would raise a signal flag to the top of their community's liberty pole to announce that a meeting of those sympathetic to the cause would soon take place. That didn't go unnoticed or unanswered in areas heavily occupied by British troops. New York City's pole was replaced five times over the course of a decade, with patriots putting up a new one not long after the King's forces would take the predecessor down.

It's not clear whether the Englewood pole annoyed the Brits sufficiently for them to tear it down, but it's been replaced several times in the past 246 years. The most recent incarnation, peeling paint and all, is a flagpole that was erected in 1964.

The Lost City of Gold in Weehawken: Eldorado Amusement Park

If you're of a certain age, you might remember Palisades Amusement Park, the entertainment complex that once stood high above the shores of the Hudson River in Cliffside Park and Fort Lee. Between the rides, the pool and the entertainment, it was a big draw for families in the New York metropolitan area until it closed in 1971. Real estate values, it seems, trumped the need for nearby fun, and besides, the host towns appear to have grown weary of the crowds overtaking the park. Municipal officials had hastened the closure by rezoning the property for high-density housing.

Palisades, however, wasn't the first big attraction on the Hudson Cliffs. The Eldorado Amusement Park in Weehawken was a haven for pleasure-seeking visitors starting in 1891, offering a more refined experience. I stumbled upon the story while wandering Boulevard East in search of the site of the Alexander Hamilton-Aaron Burr duel.

Eldorado spanned from the cliffs of the Palisades west to current day Highwood Avenue, bordered by Liberty Place on the North and Duer Place on the South. It lacked the rollercoasters and other rides of more pedestrian parks of the day, preferring to offer more impressive attractions, if the superlative reports of the day are to be believed. Civic leaders, incorporated as the Palisades Amusement and Exhibition Company, built a Moorish themed casino, amphitheater and cliffside castle surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens. Hungarian impresario Bolossy Kiralfy staged massive shows with casts as large as 1000 performers in the huge music pavilion. A 30 foot fountain on site was said to be the tallest and most expensive structure of its kind in America.

New Yorkers had long been ferrying across the river to flee the hot city summers, and they came to Eldorado in droves. Then, as today, visitors on the shores of the Hudson are greeted by the sight of the massive Palisades, and roads at the time weren't as helpful as they are now in making one's way to the top. An ingenious elevator and train system brought them from ferry slips at the river bank to the park 150 feet above. The marvel was featured in an 1891 issue of Scientific American, sounding very much like a steroid-fed version of the trams we see at amusement parks today.

Information on the park is a bit sketchy, but it seems that a large fire at the casino building in 1898 was the beginning of the end for the Eldorado. Its owners demolished the remaining buildings and sold the property as lots for an exclusive residential subdivision. Proximity to Manhattan was a huge selling point, but fortunately high-rises weren't yet in vogue. Though packed somewhat tightly by suburban standards, the houses that were built on the lots have plenty of character.

Today, the only signs of Eldorado in Weehawken are a historic marker on Boulevard East, and an Eldorado Place. Much like the lost city of gold, it's as if it never existed.

How now, Brown..... University?

Last week's County Road 518 jaunt brought me through Hopewell, a community justifiably proud of its roots. Not only was the town the home of Declaration of Independence signer John Hart, it boasts a lovely old Baptist meeting house and a number of other colonial-era buildings. I wasn't surprised to find a few historical markers in town, but I was thrown for a loop when I read the sign in front of an unadorned white colonial house. Apparently the building had once served as a Baptist parsonage and a school called the Hopewell Academy, from which today's Brown University developed.

So, wait: Brown, the Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island, actually started here in New Jersey? Well, it depends on what you mean by 'started.' The university's own website is a bit fuzzy on the school's origin, but other sources state that Brown, like most, if not all of the nine colonial colleges, was conceived by a Protestant sect to foster learning and to train men for the ministry. In this case, it was the Baptist church in Philadelphia that planted the seed, and Reverend James Manning was sent to lead the formation of the school.

Manning himself was a Jerseyman, born in Elizabethtown, raised in Piscataway and educated at the Presbyterian-run College of New Jersey. Before attending the precursor to Princeton University, he prepared for his religious studies at the Hopewell Academy, the first Baptist educational institution of its kind in America.

If the impetus for the founding of Brown came from Hopewell and Philadelphia, then why is the school located in Rhode Island? The answer is simple: the colony then known as Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations was home to the first Baptist church in America. The training ground for ministers would be located at the cradle of the faith. Congregationalist ministers were working to establish a school there, as well, so the two groups joined forces to develop what's known as Brown University.

Manning was the first president of the college, also serving as minister of the mother Baptist church in Rhode Island. Later, he was appointed to the Seventh Congress of the Confederation of States, the nation's legislative body before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Not bad for a Jersey guy, huh?

Straddling the Jerseys on Province Line Road

Drive around Mercer County near Princeton, and there's a chance you'll come across Province Line Road. Since you'd be comfortably inland from the state boundaries of the Delaware River and the Atlantic Ocean, you'd be excused for wondering how that name came about. The road certainly isn't marking any contemporary boundary, so what's the deal?

I discovered the cause during a recent wandering on County Route 518. Transfixed by the pastoral scenery, I saw the street sign for Province Line and took a turn to see where it would take me. Rounding the corner, I noticed this on my side of the intersection:

To save your eyes a bit of strain, I'll give you the synopsis. When the English took control of the New York/New Jersey area in 1664, the Duke of York gave New Jersey to two lords, Carteret and Berkeley, who probably never even set foot in the New World. The two then designated local representatives to sell portions of their shares to people who actually lived here, who became known as proprietors. (I shared a little of this in an entry about our visit to Perth Amboy last year.)

Look at the map on the plaque, and you'll see a dotted line above Three Bridges. That's where the fun starts. Naturally, when land is conveyed to new owners, boundaries are decided upon, but when it came to East and West Jersey, the process wasn't as simple as a brief discussion over a map. The Duke had divided the east and west provinces with a diagonal line reaching from Little Egg Harbor on the Atlantic to the spot where New Jersey and New York meet on the Delaware River. Sounds easy, right? It would have been, but that border wasn't officially settled until 1769. You can see the problem.

East-west lines were drawn in 1687 and 1719, but the one that stuck was plotted in 1743 by John Lawrence, now marked by Province Line Road near the plaque I found. Nonetheless, the proprietors of continued to squabble over the boundary for another 140 years. These guys really took their jobs seriously, even after their work ceased to have much relevance from a property-deeding perspective. They could learn a lesson from Steve Chernoski, the documentarian who's tackled the mystery of the line between North and South Jersey. Drive around a bit, ask the locals which side they identify with more, and decide by acclaim.

I read a few years ago that a group of surveyors were using GPS instruments to determine the straightness of Lawrence's line. If they drove the same stretch of Province Line Road that I did, they'd be pretty impressed. Check out how straight it is:

I wish I could report that the full length of the road is as pin-straight and travels clear to Little Egg Harbor, but it's not and it doesn't. About a mile away from where I took this photo, I ran into a dead end and had to resort to an intersecting street. Looking at the map when I got home, I discovered the road makes some twists and turns before terminating near a shopping mall.

Voting 'em up or down in Newton

Wandering around Sussex County this weekend, we found ourselves driving into the center of Newton, the county seat. We didn't expect to drive almost smack dab into a relic of colonial history: the town green. Now adorned with a massive Civil War memorial and an old county office building, it's bordered on all sides by what passes for city roads in the quieter parts of the state.

When you talk about a colonial town green, New England will come to mind for a lot of people. Bring up the topic in Northern New Jersey, and many will think of Morristown, which continues to maintain its park-like green in the middle of the business district. Newton's holds a special distinction: it's the only colonial county seat in the state where a courthouse on its original site fronts a town square or public green. That's a lot of qualifiers, but it basically means that when you drive into town, you can't miss seeing the Classic Revival-style courthouse. The circa 1847 structure stands on the same site as the original courthouse which was built shortly after Newton was named Sussex County seat in 1761.

We stopped to get more information from the informative Sussex County historical marker nearby. Turns out that in addition to the usual public square uses (political discourse, corporal punishment, common pasture), the Newton square was also the public polling site.

Rather than having an anonymous balloting process for municipal contests on Election Day, Newton residents voted by where they stood, physically. Sides of the green would be designated for particular candidates, voters would stand in the area that corresponded to their choice, and a headcount would be taken. And given that the green is on a hill, you'd literally be voting up or voting down, depending on where your candidate's spot was.

Newton's population grew rapidly with the construction of factories in the area, and I gather that's what put the headcount voting practice to an end in 1858. It's hard enough keeping a few dozen people standing in a single spot. Imagine how difficult it would be to keep hundreds from milling around before the official talliers lost count.

While I personally prefer the confidentiality of the voting booth, there's value in casting one's ballots publicly, in the center of town. Everyone could see who had shown up to vote, and peer pressure could encourage the tardy or reluctant to come out and participate. Those who didn't vote yet still complained about the state of affairs could easily be identified and told to hold their peace. I can imagine that the practice was the basis for many lively discussions around town in the hours and days after Election Day.

Highway history, made in Hunterdon County

You know Jersey barriers, right? Those concrete dividers in the middle of major highways? The ones that are designed to keep drivers from swerving into oncoming traffic?

I always assumed that they were invented by the folks who brought us the New Jersey Turnpike. Given how many innovations its designers contributed to highway engineering, it only seemed natural, so imagine my surprise when Ivan and I passed this historical marker on Route 173 in Hunterdon County.

The Encyclopedia of New Jersey tells us that the Jersey barrier was "developed ... to minimize the number of out-of-control trucks penetrating the median and eliminate the need for costly and dangerous steel guardrail median barrier maintenance in high-accident locations with narrow medians." Sounds like a problem for a major highway, right? Who'd have thought that the first place it would be installed would be cow country?

On second thought, it makes a lot of sense. I can see where western New Jersey would be a good test area, with lots of two-lane roads where opposing traffic could easily stray in darkness or bad weather, or drunkenness on the part of the driver. As the sign in Bethlehem Township infers, there were plenty of bad accidents right on 173 that likely could have been prevented with a partition separating traffic.

Further research reveals that the original 32-inch barrier was developed at Stevens Institute in Hoboken, under the direction of the state Department of Transportation. The Turnpike Authority later used that design and an Ontario variant to create a highly-reinforced model that effectively shunts errant semi trucks back into the proper lane of traffic.

The irony is that while we saw Jersey barriers all along Route 78 on our trip toward the historical marker, there are no barriers at all on 173. Instead, there's a turning lane in the center of the road, shared by both directions of traffic. It's kind of a shame there's not at least a little bit of the original barrier left in the road, sort of our own New Jersey version of the Berlin Wall. Wouldn't it be cool if there's a remnant of it being preserved somewhere?

A Hidden Trifecta in Raritan

Fresh from our greater white-fronted goose sighting, Ivan and I spotted a small truss bridge and historical marker on the side of the road. Wait! Stop! Turn back! Tiny bridges have always brought interesting stories, and I didn't want to pass this one up.

A Hibernia Mine bridge in Raritan? Isn't that Morris County territory? Had we stumbled on a Hidden New Jersey gem linking two non-contiguous counties? Ivan started reading the marker through his binoculars, but I couldn't help myself. I got out of the car to find out.

Talk about a span with a history! Not only is this an old bridge, it's survived its own obsolescence twice. Originally, it was part of a railroad started in 1863 to move ore from the Hibernia iron mines in Morris County to the Morris Canal and later to the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CRRNJ) at Wharton. The mines were pretty much tapped out by 1916 and closed in 1930, the same year CRRNJ bought the line to serve the area's industries.

By then, though, the bridge had gone on to its second use as a vehicular passageway across a railroad right of way in Hillsborough. It served that purpose for more than 100 years before being dismantled and stored. For the past four years, it's been exclusively a footbridge within the Somerset County Park System, enabling pedestrians to easily cross the Raritan Water Power Canal.

The what canal? When we were in Duke Island Park, we'd wondered if the canal we crossed was simply a portion of the Delaware and Raritan Canal, or maybe a feeder, given the proximity of the Raritan River. I didn't know of any other canal in central New Jersey, so when I read the Hibernia bridge marker, I was stumped. Logic and lessons learned from my many visits to Paterson's Great Falls led me to reason that water had been shunted for industrial purposes, but that's as far as I could figure when we were standing at the bridge. I doubt the Raritan ever supplied the mighty wattage of the falling Passaic River waters, but heck, I could be wrong.

Further research cemented the link: Alexander Hamilton. According to the Raritan Borough website, Hamilton visited the community after the Revolutionary War and thought the river's power could be harnessed to bring industry to the community. Local leaders were less than convinced, but the idea stayed alive and the three-mile long Raritan Water Power Canal was constructed in 1840. Predictably, factories started springing up along the river, taking advantage of cheap power and the proximity of the railroad. That's our link to Passaic County, courtesy of our first Secretary of the Treasury.

Raritan hosted one of the country's largest textile manufacturers, the Raritan Woolen Mills, which supplied the army during the Civil War and World War I. I can't find a direct source confirming the mill used water power, but it was located close to the Raritan, making it likely the Water Power Canal was a factor in its operation. Today, the property is site of a condominium complex. I wonder how many of its residents know their tenuous connection to Alexander Hamilton?

Hold the onions: the story of Liver Eating Johnson

The road wanderer's best friend (besides the GPS to get home) is the roadside historical marker. More than once, we've been drawn to an interesting story purely by chance, when we've seen one of these signs on a county road or local street. Kinda gives you incentive to drive the speed limit.

Traversing county roads around Hunterdon County a few weeks ago, Ivan and I came upon a rather puzzling marker:

The title alone gives one pause. Without reading the rest of the sign, I envisioned a local oddball who made his name by ordering liver every time he went to the local tavern. Maybe he got the name by winning a bet for eating several pounds of liver which, while being very nutritious, isn't everyone's cup of tea. 

You can read the sign for yourself to get the gist of the story, but it's possibly a little misleading. While Garrison/Johnson was born in Little York (now Alexandria), New Jersey, the deed which led to his sobriquet actually occurred in the American West. 

I checked into the Johnson story and found several conflicting accounts, all basically pretty revolting. Some say that after a troubled childhood, he left New Jersey to take to the sea, serving in the Navy before venturing west to the frontier. Others say he fought in the Mexican War and enlisted to serve on the Union side in the Civil War. Allegedly, he deserted after striking an officer, which led him to change his name to avoid capture.

The liver-eating part is, well, a bit gruesome. According to legend, members of the Crow tribe killed his wife, and in revenge, he took to a 12 year murder rampage. He slaughtered several Crow, eating his victims' livers since the tribe believed that eating the raw liver of the game they hunted would give them added strength. I haven't seen the movie Jeremiah Johnson, but I'm guessing that the cannibalism story line wasn't part of the plot. After all, the title role was played by Robert Redford, not Anthony Hopkins.

My research led me to a very well written essay by a young student who refutes the whole 'liver eating' story. That account says that while Johnson was an ornery, belligerent man, he had largely favorable relations with the natives. His nickname apparently originated after a knife fight with attacking Sioux, when a bit of his opponent's liver remained on Johnson's knife after a stabbing. Turning to his companions, Johnson offered the blade and asked if they'd like a bite. That may be callous, but it's not cannibalistic.

Johnson lived out his life in classic 1800's Western style, bootlegging whiskey, enforcing the law (while doing the bootlegging, I don't know), prospecting for gold and eventually retreating to a cabin in Montana. He's buried in Cody, Wyoming, far from his Garden State roots. Kinda makes you wonder how many other frontier legends were born in New Jersey.  

The Civil War battle fought in New Jersey

Yes, you read that correctly. A Civil War battle was fought in New Jersey. Granted, it was 13 years after the war had actually ended, but thousands of the Blue and Gray took to a field in Wantage to, once again, take arms. This time, of course, there was no ammunition and no bloodshed. It was the first Civil War reenactment in history.

Site of the Deckertown reenactment.
No doubt the McMansion is a more recent addition.

Major General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, a Sussex county native, invited veterans of both sides and their families to his Deckertown property for four days of festivities in August 1878, and over 40,000 arrived. The battle reenactment on the final day included cannon fire that could be heard up to 20 miles away.

It's interesting that Kilpatrick arranged the gathering, because he had quite the reputation during the war itself. Known for aggression and bluster, he wasn't well regarded within the army because he was said to work his troops ragged. However, he might have gained some popularity from the reenactment, where a reported 10,000 barrels of beer were on hand for the participants. Did this guy know how to throw a party, or what?

Looking at his history, it seems that maybe he realized he needed to do a thing or two to make some friends. It doesn't appear to have worked, at least not with voters. He made an unsuccessful run for U.S. Congress in 1880 after having lost the 1865 election for the governorship of New Jersey. However, his loyalty to the Republican party garnered him two stints as ambassador to Chile, where he ultimately died in 1881.

Today there's little more than a historical marker along the roadside next to the stand-in battlefield. I wonder -- would reenactors today want to camp there?