Category Archives ⇒ South Jersey

Trav­els around the byways and swamps of South Jer­sey, with occa­sion­al for­ays to sur­round­ing locales.

Deferred Horror Close to Home

May 31, 2024
· Martin Kelley

I’ve recent­ly learned that the bombs used for the most dead­liest bomb­ing raid in his­to­ry were made here in South Jer­sey, in a secret muni­tions plant in the mid­dle of the pine bar­rens out­side Mays Landing.

While we typ­i­cal­ly think of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki as the defin­ing hor­rors of World War 2 bomb­ing, the March 9, 1945 fire­bomb­ing of Tokyo is gen­er­al­ly thought to have been more dead­ly. As this arti­cle writes, “Three hun­dred B29 bombers dropped near­ly 500,000 cylin­ders of napalm and petro­le­um jel­ly on the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas of Tokyo.” The bombs killed an esti­mat­ed 100,000 peo­ple accord­ing to Wikipedia, though the round­ness of that num­ber hints at the fact that death tolls for city-obliterating bomb­ings are all guesswork.

There are some well-known ruins of ear­ly twentieth-century muni­tion plants in South Jer­sey. The most well-known is the World-War-I-era Beth­le­hem Load­ing plant in Estell Manor, which is locat­ed in what is now one of the loveli­est parks in the coun­ty, amidst nature trails and beau­ti­ful views of rivers and tidal marsh­es. The ruins are cool and in this bucol­ic set­ting, it’s easy to for­get that their prod­ucts result­ed in thou­sands of deaths.

The Tokyo napalm was made else­where, though, at the Nation­al Fire­works plant north­west of Mays Land­ing. I’ve only just learned of it via Red­dit and haven’t gone back there. From pic­tures the ruins look unre­mark­able (and right now is the height of tick sea­son so I’m not trudg­ing back there). The plant pro­duced M69 napalm clus­ter bombs, built not to explode but to set cities aflame. From the book Twi­light of the Gods:

The work­horse of the fire­bomb­ing raids was the M69 napalm incen­di­ary sub­mu­ni­tion, clus­tered in a 500-pound E46 cylin­dri­cal finned bomb. Near­ly all had been pro­duced at a remote and secret plant in the Pine Bar­rens of New Jer­sey, about 15 miles inland from Atlantic City. Each M69 sub­mu­ni­tion or “bomblet” was essen­tial­ly a cheese­cloth sock filled with jel­lied gaso­line, insert­ed into a lead pipe. Thirty-eight M69s were clus­tered togeth­er in an E46, bound by a strap that burst open on a timed fuse. The clus­ters were timed to open at 2,000 feet above the ground. Three-foot cot­ton gauze stream­ers trailed behind each bomblet, caus­ing them to dis­perse over an area with a diam­e­ter of about 1,000 feet. On impact with the ground, a sec­ond fuse det­o­nat­ed and an ejec­tion charge fired glob­ules of flam­ing napalm to a radius of about 100 feet. What­ev­er these glob­ules hit-walls, roofs, human skin- they adhered and burned at a tem­per­a­ture of 1,000 degrees Fahren­heit for eight to ten min­utes, long enough to start rag­ing fires in the teem­ing, close-built wood and paper neigh­bor­hoods at the heart of all Japan­ese cities.”

While Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki are right­ly remem­bered for ush­er­ing into the nuclear age — a sin­gle mod­ern weapon could kill mil­lions—the Tokyo bomb­ing seems to have been dead­lier and it cer­tain­ly set a prece­dent, that it was accept­able to destroy entire cities full of civil­ians for mil­i­tary goals. 

Visit to Unexpected Wildlife Refuge

March 12, 2024
· Martin Kelley

The fam­i­ly went to a new South Jer­sey Pine Bar­ren’s spot out­side of New­field. The Unex­pect­ed Refuge is real­ly wet and real­ly wild — be pre­pared for soaked boots and some cre­ative bushwack­ing even on the blazed trails. South Jer­sey Trails has pro­filed it already, of course, so you can get more details there (notably, you have to sched­ule your first vis­it so as to get an ori­en­ta­tion). There’s also a Face­book page.

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The new 1808 Batsto Hiking Trail

June 5, 2022
· Martin Kelley

The 1808 Hik­ing Trail from Bat­sto to Crow­ley­town on the Mul­li­ca Riv­er opened today. From a Face­book descrip­tion, it:

fol­lows a road that ran in part between Crow­ley­town – where the But­ton­wood Camp­ground is today – and Bat­sto Vil­lage more than 200 years ago. The 1808 Hik­ing Trail is lined with mas­sive, tow­er­ing Atlantic white cedars in sev­er­al places and cuts through Morde­cai Swamp afford­ing fan­tas­tic views deep into it. The 1808 Hik­ing Trail will pro­vide two new hik­ing loops from the Bat­sto Vis­i­tor Cen­ter: a 1.7 mile loop and a 7 mile loop via the Batona and oth­er con­nect­ing trails includ­ing the new Sand and Water Hik­ing Trail (0.9 miles, orange blazes) also open­ing on June 5.

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Don’t believe the mileage: I was expect­ing a 1.7‑mile loop but end­ed up on a 7‑plus-mile out and back hike!

Here’s a thread on the always excel­lent NJPinebar­rens forum on the Morde­cai trail. The swamp was named after Morde­cai Andrews, one of the ear­li­est Quak­ers on the Atlantic side of South Jer­sey, a founder of the sea­port town of Tuck­er­ton in 1699.

Here’s a great arti­cle by Gabe Coia on Morde­cai’s busi­ness empire. He was among the first Eng­lish set­tlers in Lit­tle Egg Har­bor and went about extract­ing the lum­ber resources upriv­er on the Mul­li­ca. There’s some great descrip­tions of thousand-year-old trees the size of 20-story build­ings that were tak­en down by Andrews’s teams. Update: I thought the orig­i­nal roadbed of the trail was built as part of the log­ging enter­prise but Gabe Coia emailed me that the roadbed of the 1808 Trail was built by Bat­sto own­er Jesse Richards (in 1808, sur­prise!) and post­dates Andrews’s lum­ber busi­ness in the area.

Putting a  swamp and felling all of these mas­sive trees would have been a very labor-intensive under­tak­ing. Coia’s arti­cle men­tions Morde­cai’s ties to Bar­ba­dos: “The ships would return with pro­duce, rum, and oth­er goods to replen­ish sup­plies for the com­mu­ni­ty at Lit­tle Egg Har­bor.” The Caribbean island was the first eco­nom­ic break-out star in the British New World and it was the first place where Quak­erism spread like wild­fire out­side of the British Isles. It also boast­ed an econ­o­my built almost entire­ly on mas­sive slave-labor camps, where even indi­vid­ual Quak­ers some­times owned hun­dreds of slaves. Giv­en the well-documented trade, at least some of oth­er goods Morde­cai’s ships were prob­a­bly bring­ing back were kid­napped Africans. This would have been the labor who logged impen­e­tra­ble swamps.

Geneal­o­gy sites back up my sus­pi­cions. I looked Morde­cai Andrews and slaves and found this, about his son-in-law John Math­is, who took over much of his busi­ness:

The vir­gin for­est of the sur­round­ing area pro­vid­ed tim­ber for the ships which sup­port­ed suc­cess­ful fish­ing and trade ven­tures that became the foun­da­tions for Great John’s ambi­tious land acqui­si­tion pro­gram. Math­is schooners, one of which was cap­tained by his son Daniel, engaged in the West Indies trade, swap­ping South Jer­sey lum­ber for pro­duce and oth­er goods that enabled the Math­is farms to pros­per. By the time of the Rev­o­lu­tion he had four farms in oper­a­tion con­tain­ing about 5000 acres, which were worked and cleared by slaves. Was said to be an exten­sive slave hold­er and one of the ear­li­est mer­chant smug­glers. He became one of the largest land hold­ers and one of the wealth­i­est and most dis­tin­guished men of Lit­tle Egg Harbor.

John Math­is’s son (Morde­cai’s grand­son) Mica­jah was dis­owned by Friends for refus­ing to eman­ci­pate the fam­i­ly’s enslaved Africans (he “did not then coin­cide with the rest of his soci­ety” when it final­ly adopt­ed an anti­slav­ery stance in the 1770s). He must have recal­cu­lat­ed his options by the time New Jer­sey start­ed abol­ish­ing slav­ery and repent­ed and man­u­mit­ted every­one in time to be buried in the meet­ing­house ceme­tery, natch.

All-in-all, it’s weird how so many local his­to­ries paint ear­ly set­tlers were like some kind of Ingalls-family sub­sis­tence farm­ers, liv­ing in caves and eking out hard­scrab­ble lives in the wilder­ness. I’m sure there were rough patch­es, and don’t get me wrong: I like my hot show­er in the morn­ing and would­n’t want to swap lifestyles out­side of a few camp­ing week­ends a year. But in many cas­es these fam­i­lies plant­ed them­selves in aban­doned Lenape towns con­nect­ed by well-established Lenape trails with water access to inter­na­tion­al trade, amassed title to hun­dreds of acres of land because plagues and wars had dec­i­mat­ed the locals, exploit­ed non-renewable resources like thousand-year-old forests that were only now acces­si­ble because of enslaved labor brought from 4,000 miles away. (I’ve writ­ten before about how colo­nial Quak­ers made for­tunes out of oth­er’s wars.)

Insert record-scratch sound effect: but back to a pleas­ant ear­ly June after­noon. On today’s trip, the new­ly acces­si­ble path of the trail is beau­ti­ful and a must-visit trip for any nature-lover in South Jersey.

The start of the trail on the Bat­sto side. 
Trail-use mark­er at the Bat­sto end. 
Trail starts off very grassy — not many peo­ple have tram­pled down here yet! 
There are many plank bridges through­out the trail 
Com­pass the dog did­n’t always like the bridges and want­ed to walk in the muck instead. 
The cut­off for the Batona Trail loop (which we did not take) 
Beau­ti­ful swamps on both sides of the trail berm. 
A curved bridge across the creek that heads toward Crow­ley’s Landing. 
More pret­ty swamp and Atlantic cedars. 
A strange growth, one I saw elsewhere. 
A walk­ing bridge of logs. 
The trail mark­ers were well-placed and we nev­er felt lost. 
At the But­ton­wood Camp­ground, we cross 542 to go down to Crow­ley’s Land­ing and dip our toes in the Mul­li­ca River. 
The cool waters of the Mullica. 

(Post updat­ed var­i­ous times as I dug more into the Andrews/Mathis fam­i­ly tree.)

Visiting Petty Island

June 16, 2019
· Martin Kelley

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As a lover of maps, I’ve often be intrigued by the envi­rons  of the Delaware Riv­er. As the tides go up and down, the time­less­ness of the riv­er becomes a kind of gen­tle solace to the indus­tri­al­iza­tion along its banks. Nowhere is this more appar­ent than on the islands which some­how remain in its course. I’ve camped at Pea Patch Island down by Delaware and found a sur­pris­ing fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in its con­vo­lut­ed own­er­ship. But clos­er to my com­mute is Pet­ty Island, sit­ting along­side the New Jer­sey main­land a short dis­tance north of the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Pet­ty Island is owned by the Cit­go oil com­pa­ny and until just a few months ago was still dot­ted with its oil tanks and a large marine car­go facil­i­ty. Satel­lite views still show this twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry indus­try. But in a very long and oftentimes-uncertain process it’s due to become part of New Jer­sey nat­ur­al lands and even­tu­al­ly to become a pre­serve. The pub­lic is gen­er­al­ly still not allowed on the island but there are occa­sion­al trips and on this past Sat­ur­day I got to tour the island.

The fad­ed sign at the guard booth to the bridge onto the island 
The island was full of heavy truck traf­fic until quite recently. 
The north end has a lot of wind-swept fields 
Chris­tine Whor­ton of NJ Audobon and his­to­ri­an Bob Shinn led the tour. 
The island has had a num­ber of names over the last three-plus cen­turies. Even now there does­n’t seem to be a con­sis­ten­cy around use of apostrophe-s’s after the name. The guard shack and wel­come sign call it “Pet­ty’s Island” but Bob assured us it should be “Pet­ty Island.” 

We were very lucky to have Bob Shinn as our tour guide. He’s a walk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia of the island and the state geopol­i­tics and waves of names and com­mer­cial uses it’s been through. He lit­er­al­ly wrote the entry on Pet­ty Island in the Philadel­phia Ency­clo­pe­dia. Not sur­pris­ing­ly there’s a lot of Quak­ers in the ear­ly record­ed his­to­ry and the deed between the first Quak­er own­er and three Lenape rep­re­sen­ta­tives is intact in the Haver­ford Col­lege col­lec­tions (this deed was also a major part of a talk by Lenape – set­tler his­to­ry giv­en by Jean Soder­lund a few months ago at Ran­co­cas Meet­ing (see also her book Lenape Coun­try)).

The ever-changing, never-settled his­to­ry of the island con­tin­ues with its name. Wikipedia, Google Maps, and — most impor­tant­ly — Bob Shinn call it “Pet­ty Island,” while the guard shack, wel­come sign, NJ Audubon Soci­ety, and New Jer­sey Nat­ur­al Lands Trust adds the pos­ses­sive to make it “Pet­ty’s Island.” The lat­ter is espe­cial­ly awkward-sounding to my ears, as South Jer­sey place names char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly drop the apos­tro­phes over time (for exam­ple, the riv­er land­ing named after Cap­tain George May is now the town of “Mays Landing.”)

Pret­ty, tidal wet­lands along the back chan­nel of the Delaware. 
You can see why devel­op­ers want­ed to get their hands on this island and its views. 
A tidal riv­er mak­ing waves. 
My son Fran­cis was on the tour too and seemed to like it. 
Bob Shinn at the bot­tom of one of the old dredg­ing berms. Behind these the Army Corps of Engi­neers poured slur­ry tak­en from the main chan­nel of the river. 
Pret­ty mas­sive drain pipes from the slur­ry pools. 

Rem­nants of the indus­tri­al­iza­tion remain: the mas­sive three-story load­ing facil­i­ty has been kept to become the bones of a future vis­i­tors cen­ter; the adja­cent asphalt park­ing area has just been replant­ed as a mead­ow and is most­ly a lot of rocks and short blades of grass (with some Fowler’s toads!). We were lucky enough to be the first pub­lic group to be there since this had all been cleared away.

Walk­ing across the for­mer marine terminal. 
Barges were loaded three sto­ries high with car­go con­tain­ers via this structure. 
This struc­ture is solid. 
Even­tu­al­ly this will be part of a vis­i­tors center. 
A friend­ly Fowler’s toad inhab­its the new meadow. 
This was a park­ing lot at the begin­ning of the year. 
Google Maps still shows this as an indus­tri­al zone. 

Bonus: I did­n’t real­ize till we were about to get in our cars that South Jer­sey Trails was also on the tour. He wrote it up too! If you look care­ful­ly, I’m in the back­ground of one of the shots, and now that I’m look­ing I think that’s him in some of mine.

New Jersey Transit wastes our time again

August 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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I just came back from what was billed as a kind of hearing/information meet­ing on New Jer­sey Tran­sit’s planned shut­down of the Atlantic City Line. At least two of us had tak­en this seri­ous­ly enough that we had writ­ten 500-word state­ments (here’s mine) but as soon as I walked into the Atlantic City rail sta­tion this morn­ing at 8am, I real­ized that this was just a pro-forma, dis­or­ga­nized PR appearance.

The chief exec­u­tive of New Jer­sey Tran­sit, Kevin Cor­bett 1, was there telling us the same list of excus­es for the shut­down they’ve been telling us, name­ly, that this is about Pos­i­tive Train Con­trol (PTC) test­ing 2. At least I think he was. NJT appar­ent­ly does­n’t believe in micro­phones. I squeezed as close­ly as I could in the amor­phous crowd of maybe 100 pas­sen­gers who had turned up but I still could only make out a few words. Near­est Cor­bett were video cam­eras whose spot­lights lit up his face. Maybe I can watch the news tonight and hear the meet­ing that I drove forty min­utes to attend3.

I did hear repeat­ed invok­ing of “PTC” but no of those words were admis­sions or mea cul­pas about the long-simmering labor prob­lems that have led to train crew short­ages. Because NJ Tran­sit’s man­age­ment have been behind tar­gets for train­ing new crews, and because engi­neers have been leav­ing for better-paying jobs on Amtrak and Metro North, there aren’t enough crews to run all of its lines and also do PTC test­ing. The eas­i­est fix to the labor short­age is to just shut down the least polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed train line and rede­ploy its crews to NYC-bound trains. We’re told this is a tem­po­rary fix but what if the man­age­ment prob­lems hir­ing, train­ing, and retain­ing crews con­tin­ues to bot­tom out?

After half an hour of this, Tran­sit police found portable line mark­ers so that pas­sen­gers could line up to talk to Cor­bett. There were many pas­sen­gers I rec­og­nized from my 15 years of com­mut­ing this line and I stood try­ing to hear them but again, to no avail. It was clear he was just giv­ing the line.

Near­by was a table with sched­ules. I was pret­ty unhap­py but I asked them a spe­cif­ic ques­tion 4. At least the Tran­sit employ­ee said she did­n’t know and would look into it. She even wrote “Far­ley” on a pad of paper. I guess my trip was­n’t total­ly wasted.

If you’re a South Jer­sey local affect­ed by all this, there’s a peti­tion to sign. My friend Joseph (bicy­cleri­i­ights on Twit­ter) has also done a great job writ­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of vision­ary South Jer­sey tran­sit reform. Update: Also, Nore­ast­er­N­ick did a much bet­ter job get­ting to the front of the line and chal­leng­ing Cor­bett. His video is great.

The inside story of The Jersey Shutdown, 2017

July 7, 2017
· Martin Kelley

The Chris Christie beach memes are fun­ny of course but I talked to more than a few local res­i­dents who won­dered what the state shut­down was about. The Star Ledger has gone deep and inter­viewed the play­ers to find out just what hap­pened ear­li­er this week:

When it end­ed ear­ly on the fourth day, New Jer­sey had been treat­ed to a remark­able polit­i­cal spec­ta­cle, even by Tren­ton stan­dards, com­plete with duel­ing press con­fer­ences, nasty back­room shout­ing match­es, and even pro­pa­gan­da posters.  Some of it played out pub­licly — very pub­licly. What did­n’t is told here, the inside sto­ry of what caused — and what final­ly set­tled — the New Jer­sey gov­ern­ment shut­down of 2017.

It’s espe­cial­ly depress­ing to read the kind of horse trad­ing that was going on behind the scenes: oth­er mea­sures float­ed to end the stand­off. It was a game to see which con­stituen­cy the politi­cians might all be able to agree to screw over. I pre­sume this is nor­mal Tren­ton pol­i­tics but it’s not good gov­ern­ing and the ram­i­fi­ca­tions are felt through­out the state.

Read: The inside story of The Jersey Shutdown, 2017

Hammonton 2017 Fourth of July

July 5, 2017
· Martin Kelley

We didn’t see much of the Ham­mon­ton Fourth of July parade this year because once again the kids were in the bike parade por­tion (all except Fran­cis, who had a bad melt­down in the morn­ing and stayed home with mom).

The bike parade was again spon­sored by Toy Mar­ket, the inde­pen­dent toy store in town (sup­pli­er of much of our house­hold’s San­ta deliv­ery). They had a table full of red, white, and blue bunting that we could apply to the bikes. We all had a lot of fun.

Notes for next year: a tan­dem exten­sion on a adult bike looked like fun and then 7‑yo Gre­go­ry will be a good age for this (we should dig ours out from the back of the garage). Also: the parade has a dog con­tin­gent so maybe a much-calmer Fran­cis will be able to be part of that next year (we’re due to pick up the ser­vice dog in 12 days!, eeek!!!)