A visual chronicle of suburban NJ
At first I thought this teepee-looking thing in the South Mountain Reservation might be an educational Native American exhibit, something like the the Lenape hut in the Great Swamp. But after seeing a few more of these trees with sticks propped around them, and hearing chatter about local artists who come out here to play in the woods… I think it’s art.
It’s about 5 feet tall, and it’s got an entrance, so you can even go sit inside, if you like!
Remember when I was rambling about Nike Road yesterday? Do you? Today I intend to ramble about the Nike Road bridge.
For twenty years after the Watchung Reservation Nike base was deactivated in 1963, as far as I can tell, both the launcher and the control area lay abandoned and unused.
And then, in the 1970s, I-78 came along.
The interstate was originally supposed to cut right through the Watchung Reservation, but the locals were definitively not okay with that. For years, a war raged between angry locals and equally angry road-builders.
Eventually, in the mid-1980s, they came to an agreement: I-78 would be built, but it would just skirt the northern edge of the Watchung Reservation (which necessitated blasting through the Second Watchung Mountain, which was a pain), and several non-road-bearing land bridges would be constructed to allow wildlife from the Watchung Reservation to migrate across the interstate without interfering with traffic.
One of those land bridges, as I’ve already shown you, was the bunny bridge.
The other land bridge is Nike Road, a little one-lane maintenance road that ran from Glenside Avenue to the Missile Tracking Radar Station.
While the lore says that Nike Road has always been part of the Nike missile station, the Nike Road bridge is dated 1985; if the missile station was deactivated in 1963, and I-78 wasn’t constructed until the 1980s, there was certainly no reason to build an overpass for an unused road. And there was certainly no need to line it with the same tall grass that’s found on the bunny bridge.
So as far as I can tell, Nike Road bridge was wholly intended to serve as an alternative to the bunny bridge for a wildlife migration land bridge… and maybe some maintenance vehicles from time to time, because why else would they go to the trouble of paving it?
(I haven’t seen this explicitly stated anywhere, so this is my own conclusion; if you have additional information either confirming or denying this, please leave a comment below!)
But as I mentioned yesterday, it seems like vehicles aren’t really a priority, because the road is currently obstructed by logs (which are, generally speaking, not very friendly to things on wheels).
And that’s that. For additional information, refer to my sources below.
References:
Alpert, S. (n.d.). “New Jersey Roads – Nikesite Rd., Union Co.” Alps’ Roads. http://www.alpsroads.net/roads/nj/nikesite/.
Alpert, S. (n.d.). “New Jersey Roads – I-78.” Alps’ Roads. http://www.alpsroads.net/roads/nj/i-78/.
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/.
Troeger, V.B. (2005). Images of America: Berkeley Heights Revisited. Arcadia Publishing: Charleston, SC. ISBN 0738537527.
Wikipedia. (2012). “Interstate 78 in New Jersey.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_78_in_New_Jersey#History.
This is approximately where the Nike missiles in the Watchung Reservation used to be controlled!
You may recall when I wrote about the Nike missile launch site, which used to be located where the Watchung Stables are now. If you don’t (don’t feel bad, I don’t expect you to), here’s a recap.
In 1957, during the Cold War, the U.S. army declared that it would construct a Nike missile base on the Watchung Reservation. Despite locals’ loud protests, the base (NY-73) was completed in 1958.
The base consisted of two parts: the launcher (now the Watchung Stables), where missiles were assembled, tested, and stored in three underground magazines (each of which could hold ten Nike Ajax missiles); and the control area (near the present Governor Livingston High School), officially known as the Missile Tracking Radar Station.
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.)
While there are reportedly no signs left of the launcher near the Watchung Stables, a little bit of barbed wire and a concrete slab still mark the former control area.
The interesting part of this is the long, winding, abandoned maintenance road that leads from Glenside Avenue to Governor Livingston High School.
When I visited the control-area road, there were a lot of fallen trees blocking the road, presumably left from Hurricane Irene (August 2011) and the Halloween Blizzard (October 2011). Since the road is currently impassible to vehicular traffic, and nobody has bothered to move the logs for 5-8 months, I suspect the road doesn’t get a lot of traffic.
I did see more joggers and pedestrians than I expected. So the road DOES get used.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Nike Road adventure tomorrow!
References:
Alpert, S. (n.d.). “New Jersey Roads – Nikesite Rd., Union Co.” Alps’ Roads. http://www.alpsroads.net/roads/nj/nikesite/.
Alpert, S. (n.d.). “New Jersey Roads – I-78.” Alps’ Roads. http://www.alpsroads.net/roads/nj/i-78/.
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/.
Troeger, V.B. (2005). Images of America: Berkeley Heights Revisited. Arcadia Publishing: Charleston, SC. ISBN 0738537527.
Wikipedia. (2012). “Interstate 78 in New Jersey.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_78_in_New_Jersey#History.
Did you know this area has not just one unused overpass with no road on top, but several?
When plans for the construction of I-78 were unveiled, they were met with a LOT of opposition, because it needed to pass through the Watchung Reservation. And both sides butted heads for years: the section of I-78 from Exits 33-41 was completed in 1974, but the section through the Watchung Reservation (Exits 43-48) wasn’t opened until 1986.
In order to get locals to agree to the road construction at all, the roadmakers needed to make a few concessions:
One of the land bridges (shown above), colloquially called the “bunny bridge,” really is just a field of grass over I-78.
This is what it looks like when you’re approaching it going west to east:
(By the way: I’m having computer problems. I may miss some updates this week.)
References:
LostinJersey Blog. (2009). “The bunny bridge of Watchung.” http://lostinjersey.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/the-bunny-bridge-of-watchung/.
Wikipedia. (2012). “Interstate 78 in New Jersey.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_78_in_New_Jersey.
You may or may not remember that I went hunting for the Rahway Valley Railroad a few weeks ago (as I mentioned in Part 1 and Part 2 of this saga).
To recap, the Rahway Valley Railroad was a short set of tracks that shuttled between the modern-day Morris & Essex line and Raritan Valley line. It was formed in 1904 and closed in 1992 after a long decline.
Morris & Essex in green; Raritan Valley in orange; Rahway Valley (defunct) in pink
When I explored a few weeks ago, I did not succeed in finding the tracks.
But this week, I took a roundabout route, all the way through the long Hidden Valley Park (which lies adjacent to the area of interest, and it is an official Union County Park and therefore legal for me to traverse. Look, they publish a PDF map and everything, it’s got to be okay).
Success!
Incidentally, now that I’ve traveled the path, if I were to do it again, I’d start behind the Knights of Columbus; there’s a sort of a trail head behind their parking lot, which is much closer to the tracks. I’d also bring a friend; I got a really creepy vibe from those woods. (No human remains [that I saw], don’t worry.)
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(This is part 3 in a series of posts on the Rahway Valley Railroad. Click here for Part 1, or click here for Part 2.
In the South Mountain Reservation, there’s a tree with a small dog sweater fastened to it, about 12-15 feet above the ground. (It’s got doggie bones knitted all over it.)
I think the condition of the sweater is too good for it to have been fastened there when the tree was much shorter, so someone must’ve put a lot of effort into nailing this sweater to this tree.
Maybe it’s a memorial of some kind? Maybe a small dog got lost here in the park, or maybe killed by a coyote, or maybe drowned in the nearby Rahway River? Maybe the dog just loved to come here when it was alive? Maybe a couple drunk kids found a sweater and thought that nailing it really high on a tree would be a hilarious prank?
Or maybe the spectacle goblins are stealing dog sweaters now. Maybe this is the work of SWEATER GOBLINS, much more closely related to Sock Goblins.
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/.
As I mentioned yesterday, the Rahway Valley Railroad operated only between Summit and Roselle Park, connecting the Morris & Essex Line to the Raritan Valley Line. It was formed in 1904 and finally closed in 1992 after a long decline.
Morris & Essex in green; Raritan Valley in orange; Rahway Valley (defunct) in pink
But there are still remnants of it lying about.
Although the majority of those remnants (in Summit, anyway) are secured behind fences with daunting “NO TRESPASSING” signs, I did find an unofficial entrance near the Summit chapter of the Knights of Columbus. But after climbing to the top of the embankment (which I was SO SURE must have been for the railroad), all I found was a maintenance road, as seen in the top photo. No rail tracks, and it’s probably too curvy to be repaved tracks.
According to an old map, that area apparently used to be a quarry.
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After I got home and compared aerial photos to an old map of the region, I discovered that apparently I’d been walking all over the former railroad at the base of the embankment. If there are any tracks still there, they’re apparently either buried or so far off the beaten path as to be invisible.
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For more information (and for where I got my sources), here are some links:
Cunningham, J.T.* (October 1950). “New Jersey’s Streak o’ Rust.” Trains Magazine. http://trainsarefun.com/rvrr/streakofrust.htm.
King, R.J. (2009). “Rahway Valley Railroad History.” Trains are Fun {personal website}. http://trainsarefun.com/rvrr/rvrrhistory.htm#pass%20history and (to a lesser extent) http://www.trainsarefun.com/rvrr/rvrr.htm.
Wikipedia. (2012, last edit). “Rahway Valley Railroad.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahway_Valley_Railroad.
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(This is part 2 in a series of posts on the Rahway Valley Railroad. Click here for Part 1, or click here for Part 3.)
The Rahway Valley Railroad was a little railroad that only operated between Summit and Roselle Park, connecting the Morris & Essex Line to the Raritan Valley Line. It was formed in 1904 and, after years of declining traffic, finally closed in 1992.
Morris & Essex in green; Raritan Valley in orange; Rahway Valley (defunct) in pink
There was talk of revitalizing it in the early 2000s for freight, but funding ran short. At the moment, the line has been more or less rebuilt from Roselle Park to Union… which means this area, in Summit and Springfield, hasn’t been touched.
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I’ve been meaning to explore this for a while, but it’s really tricky. Aerial photographs don’t show that most of the Summit part of the line is behind a tall chain-link fence with prolific “NO TRESPASSING” signs. It looks like it might be part of Celgene Corporation.
Near this particular bridge (dated 1915), there is a steep embankment from road level to bridge top that I could probably climb, but it’s in a very visible area (everybody driving or walking up the moderately-trafficked road would see me), and there are lots of dead leaves (so my exploration would be very noisy). I’ve scouted the area twice so far but have not found a discreet way to get to the top. If I ever climbed it, it’d have to be at 5:00 AM or something, and I’d have to pray that no police would be patrolling around while I was doing it.
Bottom line, I’d love to get some photos of the top, but I’d also love to not get arrested.
I did find a way in near the Summit chapter of the Knights of Columbus; you’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow to see what I found. 
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For more information (and for where I got my sources), here are some links. Google is helpful, too, as are the rest of the citations at the bottom of the Wikipedia article:
Cunningham, J.T.* (October 1950). “New Jersey’s Streak o’ Rust.” Trains Magazine. http://trainsarefun.com/rvrr/streakofrust.htm.
King, R.J. (2009). “Rahway Valley Railroad History.” Trains are Fun {personal website}. http://trainsarefun.com/rvrr/rvrrhistory.htm#pass%20history and (to a lesser extent) http://www.trainsarefun.com/rvrr/rvrr.htm.
Wikipedia. (2012, last edit). “Rahway Valley Railroad.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahway_Valley_Railroad.
* John T. Cunningham is one of the foremost authorities on local history around here. I didn’t know he’d been writing this sort of stuff since 1950!
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(This is part 1 in a series of posts on the Rahway Valley Railroad. Click here for Part 2, or click here for Part 3.)
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.}
