Ghost Towns of
New Jersey – A Tour of Our Forgotten Places, Timothy Regan, Schiffer Publishing
Ltd, Atglen, PA, 2017, 112pp, $24.99.
As
soon as I saw this nicely constructed book, I knew it was created by someone
who truly loved New Jersey history, and since this book has a thick, hard cover
with durable pages, the book can be used as a reference book with no chance of
the pages being ripped.
From the title, I expected stories about
towns with ghosts, but instead there was listed towns that were abandoned,
except for a small story on the Jersey Devil.
Everyone in New Jersey knows about The
Jersey Devil, but few know the story of the strange creature that haunts the
southern half of the state. In 1735, a mother had already given birth to 12
children, and when told she was having another child, said she wasn’t having
any of it so she said let the devil have it. She gave birth to a healthy baby
boy that shortly transformed into a cloven-hoofed beast with the head of a
collie, the snout of a horse and tail of a dragon. After that were
different stories: the beast left through the chimney, or the beast ate
everyone in the room before leaving through a hole in the roof. It’s also
called the Leeds Devil and has been menacing the citizens of Burlington, Salem,
Camden, and Cape May counties, appearing to over 2000 people over the years.
It's attacked chickens, dogs, and cats. The Devil made an appearance in X Files when the two stars traced the
beast with a state ranger through the Pine Barrens. Continued efforts to
capture, corral or photograph the Devil has been unsuccessful, although
footprints have been discovered and shrieks have been heard.
I have been interested in the history of
New Jersey for close to 65 years and I thought I knew everything about this
state’s history, but I was mistaken. I only knew 5 of the 18 towns that were
covered in the book. It is obvious the author did much investigation of the
sites, since many of towns are not very well known. If you like history and
want to know about the lesser known New Jersey towns of long ago, then you’ll
want to read this book. The colorful vignettes of the towns are most endearing,
and each town is treated with a very brief history of its beginning and the
events that led to its being abandoned. Sometimes there are old pictures with
current pictures for comparison.
Good reasons for the location of a town
would depend on the industry needed for the people in the area, i.e. iron
works, sawmills, forges, ice cutting, or transportation. Other towns were
created as a crossroads for delivering valuable raw materials during the
Revolutionary and Civil War.
Towns that didn’t succeed may have been
destroyed by natural causes like fires or destroyed by the British during the
Revolution or during the Civil War. Some populations elected to move from the
town because the industry or craft was no longer needed due to the development
of new technologies. For example, instead of relying on iron bogs to get iron,
industries found iron ore in Pennsylvania, which required a different process
and transportation method. Other towns were in the way of land improvements and
had to be removed. When a dam was built in response to constant flooding in the
Delaware Gap area, many homes were bulldozed and people were relocated, but
unfortunately the dam was never built.
Although some towns were deserted
because of new technologies, others benefited. The Morris Canal began in 1831
to bring goods and coal from Pennsylvania to Newark and the path of the canal
went right through Waterloo, which gave an obscure town like Waterloo Village a
resurgence and it continued to be popular until the canal peaked during the
Civil War when the railroads started to take over.
It has been a nice trip through New Jersey’s
lost history of ghost towns. It’s amazing how history, economy, industry, wars,
and even recreational towns play a part a town’s ability to survive. I plan to
go to some of the locations in the book and will now see these towns in a
different way. I am so glad the author has made it easy for me to find these
places when he included the visitor information and GPS coordinates
conveniently at the end of each chapter.
Sometimes, when a town is abandoned,
there are sure to be a few ghosts hanging around. If you visit and find any,
please tell Psychic-Magic about it.
- Mary Moskello
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