Keeping track: railroad vestiges lead to a storied past

It's not all that unusual to run across railroad tracks while wandering around New Jersey. With a few thousand miles of track laid over the past 185 years or so, any trip within the state is bound to have you hearing the "clunk-a-clunk-a" of tires over tracks, or traveling beneath a railroad overpass.

However, when you see tracks that look like this:

you stop and take a look. And when you run into them at two different locations over the course of a couple of weeks, you get curious. The first occurrence was in Hightstown, where the stones and rails were placed near North Main Street downtown. The second was within a 15 minute drive, at historic Dey Farm in Monroe Township. Connecting rails were pulled away years ago, leaving these two segments as utter curiosities. The stone is virtually the same as the sleepers we've seen on old Morris Canal planes, though with gaps in between rather than in abutting blocks, making us wonder when the now-common wooden railroad ties came into vogue. And where did this railroad go?

We'd stumbled on vestiges of the Camden and Amboy, the first railroad built in New Jersey, incorporated in 1830 and chartered on February 15, 1831. How old is it? It's so old that the first train that rode the tracks was pulled by horses.

The Monroe stretch is pretty short
and offers new homeowners
the frustrating reality that while they live
near the railroad, it'll get them nowhere.

The Camden and Amboy was the realization of the ambition of John Stevens, who we know from his earlier forays into steamboats, namely the establishment of the first regular steam ferry service between Hoboken and Manhattan. While he successfully laid a small bit of track on his own property to run a British-built engine, it was left to his sons Robert and Edwin to take the concept to a larger scale.

The first stretch of the railroad linked Bordentown through Jamesburg to South Amboy via horse-drawn cars. Rails were spiked down onto granite sleeper stones reportedly produced by inmates at New York's Sing Sing Prison. Only when shipments were late did Robert Stevens consider laying the rails on squared-off wooden crossbeams, creating a more reliable bed that prompted him to replace all of the granite with wood. Stevens was also responsible for the development of the "T" shaped track and railroad spikes we're accustomed to; used together, they provided a smoother ride overall.

As workers continued laying track, the Stevens brothers purchased their first locomotive, the John Bull, from a Newcastle, England manufacturer. In a situation that's familiar to anyone who's bought Ikea furniture, the engine arrived in several pieces and without instructions for assembly, leaving railroad mechanic Isaac Dripps to reason it out though he'd never seen a locomotive before.

It would be another two years before the engine would serve the line, but Robert Stevens cannily made a test run in November 1831 to give select New Jersey legislators and other dignitaries a chance to enjoy the new technology. This, perhaps, was an early taste of the outsize influence the company would have over government officials in its most powerful years; at one point years later, pundits would jokingly refer to New Jersey as the "State of Camden and Amboy."

In fact, the C&A secured a monopoly on transportation across the state's waist, merging with the Delaware and Raritan Canal Company by a 1831 act of the Legislature that created "the Joint Companies." Passengers would travel by rail, while the canal would handle freight shipments from Bordentown to New Brunswick. The new company agreed to pay the state a $30,000 annual franchise fee that effectively financed government operations. By 1834, the railroad finally reached the breadth of the state between its namesake cities, later buying out rivals to extend its chokehold.

The history of New Jersey's railroad industry is long, complex and loaded with intrigue that would confound J.R. Ewing (consider, for example, Hopewell's frog war). Ultimately, the C&A was bought out by the larger, more powerful Pennsylvania Railroad in its quest to control New Jersey's transportation system, but it had already made its mark as a true pioneer.

Have you seen other portions of the C&A?

From copper mine to steamboat, the New Jersey ventures of Nicholas Roosevelt

When inclement weather forces us Hidden New Jerseyans to curtail travel, we often turn to other means of exploration. The reference books and histories we've picked up over the years aren't quite those roadside markers we stop to check out on county roads, but they've got some unexpected gems, nonetheless.

One of my new favorites is the New Jersey Almanac Tercentenary Edition published by the Trenton Evening Times in 1964 to commemorate the state's 300th anniversary. Besides giving an illuminating look at life in the Garden State 50 years ago, it contains lists upon lists of interesting tidbits like two-sentence bios of notable New Jerseyans, brief descriptions of towns and cities, and a year-by-year guide to events of importance.

It's an entry in that last category that caught my eye during a recent snowstorm. The big event for the year 1794 is: "Nicholas Roosevelt made first steam engine ever built entirely in America at his shop "Soho" in Belleville."

Roosevelt? As in Teddy Roosevelt and FDR? The New York Roosevelts?

Absolutely. Nicholas Roosevelt was not only the cousin (several generations back) of both Presidents Roosevelt, you could say he was one of New Jersey's first industrialists.

Born in New York in 1767, Roosevelt's first foray into New Jersey was in the early 1790s, when he became linked to what, even then, was thought of as the old Schuyler Mine in North Arlington. Originating in 1719 when an enslaved worker on Arent Schuyler's farm found a copper nugget on the property, the mine closed in 1772 after a disastrous fire. Roosevelt and partners formed the New Jersey Copper Mine Association in 1793 to restart mining operations at the site, a venture that ultimately failed.

Though the mine was a disappointment, it was the stepping stone into New Jersey that led to Roosevelt's greater acclaim. Purchasing land in Second River (now Belleville), he built a foundry, smelter and machine shop to build steam engines. Dubbed Soho after a similar enterprise in Birmingham, England, the shop became known as one of the nation's top foundries, supplying engines for notable clients like the Philadelphia Waterworks. The business took a severe financial hit, however, when a government contract to supply rolled copper for warships was cancelled.

Among those taking note of the quality of Soho's engines was transportation engineer John Stevens. Already experimenting with steam-driven boats, he and his partner Robert Livingston commissioned Soho in 1797 to build an engine for the Polacca, a craft with a stern-mounted propeller. Roosevelt was already familiar with self-propelled boats, having experimented with spring-driven paddleboat technology as a youth. When the Polacca proved to be much slower than anticipated, Roosevelt advocated the use of a side-mounted wheel, but Livingston refused to consider the concept.

Roosevelt had, indeed, come up with a solution so workable that it was later adopted by Robert Fulton. You might recognize that name: he's the engineer who's usually linked most directly with the successful development of the steamboat. I've seen a few different accounts of how this came to be, but the most interesting one is that Livingston suggested the side-mounted wheel to Fulton without telling him where the idea had originated. And according to a website citing sources at the FDR Library and Museum, some Roosevelt family members continue to claim that Nicholas was the true inventor of the steamboat.

It's not clear exactly when Roosevelt left New Jersey for good, but by 1810 he'd entered into a partnership with Fulton and Livingston to run a steamboat down the Mississippi River. He died in Skaneateles, NY in 1854, his contributions to steam powered technology now largely forgotten while other inventors continue to enjoy acclaim.

I just wonder what other gems are hiding in the Tercentenary Almanac, just waiting to be unearthed.