A vist to the Abandoned Pasadena Brooksbrae Tile and Brick Factory Ruins in Manchester New Jersey in the Pine Barrens.
GPS: 39.887904, -74.441565
New York TImes Article October 28, 2007
A FEW hundred yards in from the road, past the abandoned railroad tracks, a casual hiker may be surprised to come across rows of stone stanchions and brick walls in the middle of the forest. A closer inspection will reveal a series of tunnels. Look even closer and one will notice the multicolored bits of paint splattered across most of the surfaces of this ruin.
Welcome to Brooksbrae Brick Company, one of the Pine Barrens’ dozens of ghost towns. Slightly eerie though it may be, this is not where you will find spectral images of those who once roamed these lonely woods. Leave that to the ghost hunters who come out in droves this time of year in search of the Jersey Devil or other apparitions believed to still reside here.
Rather, these lost towns are what remain of communities where thousands of people lived and toiled in the 18th and 19th centuries, producing tile, bricks, glass, lumber, paper, iron and munitions.
“This was not some bucolic Walden Pond - this was heavy industry,” said Budd Wilson, a former state archaeologist who over the last 48 years has excavated many of the sites of these lost towns. “People act like nothing ever happened here. That’s not the case. Plenty happened here. It was just 100 years ago.”
An observant visitor with a fertile imagination can still catch glimpses of this bygone era, whether by examining the detritus, much of which still sits on the forest floor, or by visiting the buildings and ruins that yet stand, in various stages of preservation or decay. But before setting out to discover this lost world, a little history might prove useful.
A vast labyrinth of woods, ponds, streams and trails, the Pine Barrens’ now largely protected 1.4 million acres provided fertile opportunity for colonists in the early 1700s who tapped the area’s primary resource: water.
First were the sawmills, operating on water power and taking advantage of the abundant cedar and pine. Soon after, a high level of iron ore was discovered in the water. These iron bogs became a major resource for iron production for close to 100 years, with 17 furnaces operating at one point, manufacturing cast- and wrought-iron goods.
“You had all this noise and all this smoke coming out of the tops of these furnaces,” said Mr. Wilson, describing the area in the early 1800s. “It was like having your fireplace come out into your room all the time. And people were living amongst this.”
By the mid-19th century, the clay and brick industries were thriving, as well as glass manufacturing, which used the abundant sand here. When much of the country’s manufacturing moved to the cities, this area switched to agriculture, specifically cranberries and blueberries, which are still vital industries today.
Meanwhile, the land became ripe for speculators, like the Philadelphia financier Joseph Wharton, who bought up dozens of abandoned industrial towns with plans to pump fresh water from the Pine Barrens to Philadelphia. After he was thwarted by legislation passed to prohibit such interstate export, the land was eventually sold to the state. The 115,111 acres of Wharton State Forest make up the largest single tract of land in New Jersey.
Fascinated by the ruins she stumbled upon while hiking in the Pine Barrens, Barbara Solem-Stull, of Shamong, in Burlington County, spent a year investigating the remains of some 45 former industrial towns. The result was her book “Ghost Towns and Other Quirky Places in the New Jersey Pine Barrens” (Plexus Publishing, 2005). Filled with hand-drawn maps, photos and detailed directions on how to reach these often difficult to find places, the book is part travelogue, part history and part day-trippers’ guide. A determined explorer can probably visit three or four sites in a day, she said.
To get a sense of the lost civilization here, a visitor would do well to start at Harrisville, where some of the most intact ruins stand. On the west border of Bass River Township along Route 679, Harrisville was a gathering place for many of the surrounding company towns. Industry here can be traced back to an iron-slitting mill in 1795, but the majestic brick and stone arches that remain are from the late 1800s, when the Harris brothers ran a paper mill.
Continued: www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/nyr...