Radmini on the Lawrence Hopewell Trail. Source: TCMCarson Road Woods. Source: TCM
About one mile of the twenty-mile-or-so Lawrence Hopewell Trail passes through Carson Road Woods’ hedgerows, fields, and forests. The land was once farm fields and a peach orchard; in the early twenty-first century, it was preserved as a park, saving it from development. To the north, the LHT passes through the Educational Testing Services headquarters, home of the SAT, GRE, and other standardized tests, before looping back through Rosedale Park and Mercer Meadows, a.k.a the Pole Farm, which are about three miles west of Carson Road Woods.
In association with the Fine Feathered Friends exhibit, here’s history behind how the Eastern Goldfinch became New Jersey’s official state bird.
Anthony Kuser, who is introduced late in the video, was also a sponsor of the search for a surviving passenger pigeon. In 1909, he offered a $300 reward for proof of an undisturbed passenger pigeon nest. The ensuing search was unsuccessful (many sightings of presumed passenger pigeons turned out to be mourning doves) but the reward, and the publicity surrounding it, helped establish with certainty the extinction of passenger pigeons in the wild.
Spring Lake is part of Roebling Park, which is in the Abbott Marshlands of New Jersey. The park has had many names over the years. In the early twentieth century, this was the White City Amusement Park. It was renamed Boiling Springs Park a few years before it closed in 1922.
The Casino restaurant, a c. 1820 mansion that is now privately owned, provided patrons a view of the landscape below. A grand staircase allowed them to walk down to the lake, where there were more rides. The staircase is one of the few visible remnants of its past.
Most of the trails are for walking only, but the Spring Lake loop is bikeable. This park is currently closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The staircase at Spring Lake. Overlook Mansion, formerly the Casino Restaurant, is visible at the top of the bluff. Source: TCMSpring Lake in 1907 postcard. A staircase is visible in the center of the photo, but may be a precursor to the existing one.
White City Park in 1908. The top of the staircase is depicted on the left edge of the map. Source: Insurance Maps of Trenton, New Jersey. Sanborn Map Co., 1908.
The first thing to realize is that the Hog Island cranes are no longer on Hog Island. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, a massive shipyard was set up alongside the Delaware River on Hog Island in Philadelphia to build transport and cargo ships, although none of the ships were completed before the war ended in 1918.
Source: TCM
In 1930, Philadelphia bought Hog Island and transformed it into what is now the Philadelphia International Airport. Two of the cranes were sold and moved upriver to Trenton. At the Trenton Marine Terminal, they were used to load and unload ships for several decades before being taken out of service. Only the two gantries remain; the cranes that sat on top of them are gone. The Hog Island cranes were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Port Mercer was a small town along the Delaware and Raritan Canal in central New Jersey. Since the canal closed down in 1932, commerce has shifted east to U.S. Route 1, where shopping malls, car dealers, and restaurants are now located. On the west side of the canal, there are still extensive swampy wetlands between Lawrence Township and Princeton.
Source: TCM
One of the buildings that remains from the canal’s heyday is the Bridge Tender’s House – the worker who lived there was responsible for swinging open the bridge when a canal boat came through. Several similar buildings still exist along the canal.
Bridge Tender’s house at Port Mercer, NJ. Source: TCM
Frederick Law Olmstead did not want a zoo in the park he designed for the city of Trenton, but Trenton gave the people what they wanted anyway. These barns were added later and housed exotic deer and other animals into the 21st century. Recent work has restored the natural areas, but the abandoned and decaying animal barns remain in place for now.
Source: TCMSource: TCMYou bet the RadMini was there. Source: TCM
Serendipitous is not the right word to use when you find yourself riding your bike alone in the woods around Crystal Lake on Friday the 13th. Fortunately, this was not Camp Crystal Lake, the stomping grounds of infamous axe-murderer Jason Voorhees. That’s up in north Jersey.
This Crystal Lake Park is near Bordentown in central Jersey. The park is mostly farm fields, with some steep wooded areas along the bluff overlooking Crystal Lake. To get to the park, you do have to drive down Axe Factory Road. I saw no actual axe factory, nor, I’m happy to say, any axe-wielders.
Sunny ride over the leaf-covered trails at Clayton Park near Imlaystown in Monmouth County, New Jersey. I rode for over six miles, covering almost all the trails in the park. Sighted one horse, one bike, and three dogs.
