A visual chronicle of suburban NJ
As portraits go, this is a pretty terrible one. I am lousy at clicking my shutter at the right time!
But these lovely ladies were hanging out in a tent at the Spring Garden Fair and Plant Sale, encouraging kids like me to plant ourselves a sunflower!
I got as far as putting the soil into a little newspaper pot before I mentioned that I live in an apartment, and I was gently informed that sunflowers + apartments = a bad idea.
I pouted and gave my dirt back.
Ohhhh well.
This past Sunday was the 23rd Annual Spring Garden Fair and Plant Sale, featuring Union County Master Gardeners!
A section of the Watchung Reservation is dedicated to their Master Gardener demo garden anyway, so they just set up some tables and tents, and put out a whole lotta plants, and called it a fair.
Everywhere you looked, there were gardeners standing by ready to spring to action! And plants! Plants as far as the eye could see! (The plants weren’t ready to spring to action, though. No action plants.)
Every green-thumber’s dream, really.
…Well. Even for someone with a brown thumb (like me), it was a lovely opportunity to see all these beautifully cared-for plants in one spot. (Oh my poor stevia. Sigh.)
Everyone loves a generic sunset over a generic lake!
(This is actually Echo Lake, which I suppose is a very specific lake.)
Ducks! At Echo Lake in Mountainside. This is the east end of the lake.
I specify this because Echo Lake is a very long, narrow lake, and it matters.
These are the Watchung Stables, former home to U.S. Army Nike Missile Battery NY-73!
In 1957, during the Cold War, the U.S. army declared that it would construct a Nike missile base on the Watchung Reservation. Despite the loud protests of both local officials and residents, the base— NY-73— was completed in 1958.
The base consisted of two parts: the launcher, where missiles were assembled, tested, and stored in three underground magazines (each of which could hold ten Nike Ajax missiles); and the control area, officially known as the Missile Tracking Radar Station, which was not actually located within the Watchung Reservation (or at least not within the present boundaries of the reservation).
(The launcher was in Mountainside where the Watchung Stables are now; the control site was next to Governor Livingston High School in Berkeley Heights).
For reasons apparently unknown, the battery started shutting down in 1962, less than four years after they opened it. (It was officially deactivated in 1963.) Point of interest: the underground cables connecting the launcher and control areas were severed just days before the Cuban Missile Crisis.
For the next twenty years, I’m not sure if anything constructive happened to the site, but it seems like local kids enjoyed trespassing to check it out. (There are at least two accounts that the control room had flooded.)
Construction on the Watchung Stables began in 1983, and the stables officially moved onto the former launch site in 1985, where they’ve remained since. There might be some concrete bunkers tucked away underneath the buildings, but there are no longer any obvious remnants of the missile base.
For information on the modern-day amenities of the Watchung Stables, check out their official website.
References:
Bender, D.E. (n.d.). “Nike Battery NY-73: Summit, NJ.” Nike Missiles and Missile Sites. http://alpha.fdu.edu/~bender/NY73.html.
Harpster, F. (2009). “Missiles in Mountainside: Nike Battery NY-73.” From the Hetfield House (newsletter). http://www.mountainsidehistory.org/files/HHnewsletter09final.pdf (PDF).
LostinJersey Blog. (2009). “Summit Nike base.” http://lostinjersey.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/summit-nike-base/#comments (comments used extensively).
Troeger, V.B. (2005). Images of America: Berkeley Heights Revisited. Arcadia Publishing: Charleston, SC. ISBN 0738537527.
UCNJ.org: County of Union, New Jersey. (n.d.). “Chronology of the park system: 1921-1987.” http://ucnj.org/community/parks-recreation/chronology-of-the-park-system/.
February 29 is Leap Day! I think I can manage an honorary leap every four years.
(Alternate title: Jumpin’ at the Woodside.)
In the southeast corner of the Watchung Reservation, there’s a big water tower (on trail maps as “WT”) colloquially known as “Suicide Tower.”
Only one documented suicide has been committed there, back in 1975. Gregg Sanders, a local high school student, killed his parents (the descriptions “axing to death” and “sliced and diced” have been used) and then jumped to his own death here. (Back in those days, the tower featured a spiral staircase and an observation deck. They’ve since been removed.)
Rumor has it that the double murder-suicide may have been linked to Satanist Rituals also rumored to take place in the park back then. That’s totally unconfirmed, though.
Nowadays, it’s just a cool place for rust to aggregate, and for kids to practice their graffiti. (For all you graffiti-tagging aficionados out there, the only tag I could discern was “swag,” which— is that even a tag? I thought it was just slang. But I am no expert on these things.) There’s also a cell tower immediately adjacent to the water tower. In fact, a Verizon guy was hanging out in his truck just off-camera when I took this photo. We exchanged hellos.
Sources:
Anonymous. (2001). “Watchung Suicide Tower Tales.” Weird N.J. http://www.weirdnj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=129&Itemid=28#29.
Balogh, D. (2008). “Watchung Reservation.” Dan & Laura’s Photo Web Album. http://www.danbalogh.com/watch.html.
The Lostinjersey Blog. (2009). “Watchung Reservation.” http://lostinjersey.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/watchung-reservation/. {Comments here also used.}
The Watchung Stables need somewhere to store their hay, of course. This just happens to be one classy-lookin’ hay structure.
The Watchung Stables are located on the Watchung Reservation. As evidenced by this photo, they do in fact contain real live horses.
The stables used to be the site of a Nike missile launcher! There are reportedly no longer any signs of that, though.
This building for the Mountainside Library was built from 1966-1968, but Mountainside has had a library in some iteration or another since 1934 (originally in Borough Hall, and later in several rooms within the ‘Echobrook Building,’ of which I know nothing).
The library’s collection has grown from barely a bookcase full in 1934, to 8,000 in 1940, to 24,000 in 1970, to over 50,000 in 2011.
…Well, actually, instead of reading my blather, you could just check out the PDF I’ll link to below (and here). It’s well-written, and thorough, and it mentions chow mein parties (p. 20).
Reference:
Entering Mountainside: 1895-1970. (1970?). “Book Power.” 20-22. http://www.mountainsidelibrary.org/history.html. [Brochure].
