Pinelands Evolution

NEWS & VIEWS > LOCAL HISTORY

Once an area that thrived on industry and production, the Pine Barrens today  serves more as a retreat from the corporate world.

By Ray Schweibert 

Add Comment | Comments: 2 | Posted Nov. 2, 2011

Remnants of the Weymouth Furnace

A common perception today is that the vast area known as the New Jersey Pine Barrens is an undeveloped, undisturbed expanse ideal for fleeing the daily grind to find a little peace and tranquility. Ask the average non-southern New Jersey resident what images the Pine Barrens conjure up and you might hear about the endless tract of trees they drove through to get to the seashore, the folklore of the Jersey Devil, or the place where Paulie and Christopher got lost trying to bury a body on The Sopranos. 

The Pine Barrens (or Pinelands) is, in fact, one of the largest contiguous stretches of wilderness on the East Coast, encompassing parts of seven counties, three state forests, and over a million acres protected by the state DEP. “Barrens” is sort of a misnomer, though, in that hundreds of species of plants and animals — many indigenous and completely unique to this area — lurk in those bogs, woods and creeks.  

What is also erroneous is the common assumption that the Pine Barrens is, and always was, undeveloped. In fact, when the nation was in its outset during the 18th and 19th centuries, the Pine Barrens was a hub of all sorts of industry.

Harvestable food sources that managed to thrive in its sandy, acidic soil include cranberries and blueberries, and the Pinelands also teemed with gristmills, logging mills, paper and glass manufacturers and — undoubtedly the most notable asset of its bygone era (and one that played a huge role in the manufacture of, among other things, weaponry and supplies for the Revolutionary War and War of 1812) — iron production.  

The bogs of the Pine Barrens were a prime source of limonite ore, or bog ore, which was mined from the streams and bogs and refined in blast furnaces at outposts like Batsto, Lake Atison, Weymouth and several others. The first furnace appeared in the late 17th century, but the industry hit its peak in the late 18th century and lasted until roughly 1850. The Pine Barrens was a major pig iron supplier to large metropolitan areas like Philadelphia and New York City. When a higher quality ore was discovered and mined more efficiently in mountainous regions of Pennsylvania, iron production in the Pine Barrens disappeared completely by the early 1850s.  

“Batsto [Iron Works, created and operated by the Richards family since 1784] shut down in 1848,” says southern New Jersey historian Paul Schopp, a foremost authority on the Pine Barrens and Camden County.

“That’s when the furnace went cold, and in order to keep the industrial village going they switched over to the production of glass, particularly window glass and to a lesser extent bottles and street lamps. A fire took it out in 1862 and now there’s just a large open area there where a marker exists.” 

The Batsto operation employed over 1,000 people in its heyday, but it and nearly all the industry that once kept the Pine Barrens bustling have largely vanished, and only “ghost towns” remain.  

“[Industry thrived] to the point that there was a proposed branch railroad that was supposed to run into Batsto,” says Schopp, who co-authored the book The Trail of the Blue Comet, a train that ran from Jersey City to Atlantic City, through the Pine Barrens, from 1929-1941.

“The Raritan and Delaware Bay [Railroad] was supposed to build a line from the Camden-Atlantic [Railroad, the first line connecting the city of Camden to Atlantic City], which it did do, from what today is Atco and what was then called Jackson Junction. But it was later supposed to extend the line to Batsto and that part of the line never got built [due to conflicts between competing rail lines].”  

Industry still exists in the Pinelands, but it’s primarily focused on tourism and activities like nature walks, camping, canoeing, fishing and hunting. 

“There’s still some logging going on, limited and regulated by the state DEP, and there’s been some stirring about reinvigorating sand pits,” says Schopp, who will have a new publication, a Gazetteer of Linseed Oil Mills of New Jersey, due out by the end of this year.

“[Sand pits] produce a variety of sands for different things like the construction trades, glass production, water filtration plants and other purposes. But tourism is certainly a large part of [Pinelands industry] now.” 

Schopp, the former executive director of the Camden County Historical Society, has been instrumental in having three buildings in Camden County placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Among his current research projects — and coinciding well with the recent release of Judge Nelson Johnson’s book The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City, Schopp is examining the hotels that housed African Americans from the late 19th and early 20th century eras, when the resort was highly dependent upon African-American labor for growth and sustenance. 

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