Journey 200 years back in time at Batsto Village in the Pine Barrens to a landscape of industry and wilderness.
By: Ilene Dube
You could battle the traffic egressing greater New York City to drive to the wonderful wilderness in the Adirondacks. Or, with canoes, kayaks and bicycles loaded on the roof of your car, you could embark on the 10-hour trek to Maine and worship the sunrise on Mount Desert Island.
Better yet, you could hop onto Route 206 South and be in the Pine Barrens in little more than an hour. And what a pleasurable hour it is rolling along Route 206 is like taking a trip back in time, where farmers still sell produce along the roadside. Put your money in the cigar box it’s the honor system here when you buy strawberries, blueberries and peaches.
At 1.1 million acres, covering 1,875 square miles, the Pine Barrens occupying almost a quarter of the state is the largest tract of undeveloped land on the Mid-Atlantic seaboard, and is much larger than most of the national parks in the country.
"This Barrens had instant appeal because it was an undiscovered jewel that had been sleeping within the middle of the urban sprawl that extends from Boston to Washington," writes Rutgers Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences Joanna Burger in Whispers in the Pines: A Naturalist in the Northeast (Rutgers University Press, $18.95). "For the first time, New Jersey had something that was a national treasure: a relatively pristine habitat with unique biological diversity."
European settlers named it the Pine Barrens because of the sandy nutrient-poor soil that does not favor traditional crops. Forty-five inches of annual rainfall drains rapidly through the sandy acid soils, forming underground aquifers. The surface water is browned by iron deposits and tannins from leaf litter, and this in turn spawns an array of plant and animal life so, ecologically, it is anything but barren. Vernal ponds form from spring rain and support tree frogs, rare insects and herbaceous plants.
Those tannins are what make the lakes look like they’ve been filled with an abundance of strong Russian tea. No wonder the rufous-sided towhee is singing "Drink your tea! Drink your tea!"
In order to help lure visitors to the area, the folks at Wharton State Forest teamed up with Lee H. Skolnick Architecture and Design for an orientation exhibition, Batsto: Stories in the Pines, opened last summer. Located in the air-conditioned visitors center, the interactive exhibit weaves together stories of the historic village and its once thriving community in the Pine Barrens. To supplement the exhibit, a 110-seat theater has been added to screen a 10-minute documentary on Batsto.
The project marked the 50th anniversary of Wharton State Forest. It’s a good idea to breathe new life into museum exhibits every 25 years or so, says Superintendent Florence McNelly.
Northern pine snakes, red squirrels, timber rattlesnakes, fence lizards, pine warblers, red-bellied turtles and great blue herons: these are examples of the wildlife inhabiting the area, and the sounds, footprints and leaf markings of this life are piped into the exhibit.
We learn there are 13 different types of soil here suitable for a range of flora from pitch pine and oak to bracken fern, pitcher plants and huckleberry. A replica of the soil strata tempts one to touch, and the beauty is, you can, as Ms. McNelly demonstrates. "We want you to see and experience and take ownership," says the Florida native.
Ms. McNelly came to the Garden State because she fell in love with a man, but over the years she has been falling in love with the state as well. "The majority of people who’ve never visited are very surprised," she says. "They have a vision of highways and industry, but there is so much preserved farm land and you can still find endangered species, hidden places and waterways that make South Jersey beautiful."
The Lenape people lived here long before the European settlers. The Lenape found the pines provided valuable resources for everything from canoes to face paint. The name Batsto may have come from the Lenape word for bathing.
In Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 70 to 80 percent of the forests were clear cut for farming, but the New Jersey pine barrens were less appealing to these settlers because the land was less fertile. "Land all along the East Coast became very valuable after mosquito control in the early 1900s made it possible to live and play along the Atlantic Coast," writes Ms. Burger.
At the same time, disruption to the ecosystem meant birds and other animals that depended on insects suffered population decline. Fire, too, was necessary to maintain the balance without fire, oak trees would take over and shade out the pines but as the land became settled, fires were suppressed.
The introductory film at Batsto, produced by Russell Brosnahan Haffner Multimedia, combines new and vintage footage to remind us that 200 years ago this space of wilderness was a landscape of industry. The Batsto River, rich with bog ore, was mined using flat-bottomed boats to build up the Batsto Iron Works. In the late 18th century, Batsto was well known for iron pots, Dutch ovens, cast iron pipes and pot-bellied stoves. By the mid 19th century, Pennsylvania was producing cheaper and better iron, so Batsto turned to making glass street lamp panes and windowpanes. Sand and shells were plentiful, as was wood to fire the furnace.
But glassmaking led to hazardous fires, and soon the glassworks was shut down. Those who remained in the village found meager work, and in 1874, a fire destroyed half the village.
Along came the hero of the story, Joseph Wharton, founder of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. A Quaker who had made his fortune in nickel mining, he was co-founder of Swarthmore College and Bethlehem Steel. Wharton bought the village and surrounding area to pursue his lifelong interest in agriculture. He was interested in forest management and conservation and succeeded in growing peanuts, salt hay and cranberries in the bogs that had once yielded iron.
"He saw the water resources and had plans to dam up the river and sell the water to Philadelphia," says Ms. McNelly. Philadelphia instead adopted a filtration system for the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, where raw sewage had caused typhoid and other water-borne illnesses. "It’s interesting to see where we’d be if that had been allowed. We wouldn’t have the pristine rivers, and a lower river level would have changed the ecosystem."
Instead, Wharton planted thousands of trees black walnut, catalpa, cottonwood, white pine, Norway spruce and European larch at Atsion and it became a model for future generations of foresters.
With this introduction, visitors are invited outdoors to view the restored village buildings, beginning with the mansion Wharton remodeled in the 1870s and 1880s. He added dormers and a Mansard-style roof to reflect Italianate and Second Empire architecture. Victorian features such as a wrap-around porch, tower and grand lawn were added, although Wharton wanted to maintain these in a style of simplicity, in keeping with his Quaker heritage.
We are taken on a tour of the mansion, which remains remarkably cool on a hot sticky day. The tour guide tells us Wharton bought the house and 100 acres for $14,000, then spent $40,000 on the remodeling. The house has two parlors, and pocket doors separated the men’s and women’s parlors when the Whartons entertained "high society." Men could smoke cigars and play the zither, mandolin and piano in their room. As one of the richest men of his day (and one of great physical stature, as samples of his coat and PJs in the visitors center show), Wharton also had houses in Philadelphia and Newport, R.I. The family spent only spring and fall at the Batsto manse. Shutters keep it cool during the warm months and south-facing windows help to warm it in colder weather.
The stairs help to support the house and are built from ash, oak, maple and sycamore found on the property. There are 34 rooms in the house, half of them bedrooms. "The servants would travel from mansion to mansion with the family," says docent Vera Stek. "The house has flush toilets, but the servants used the out house."
A water tank in the tower was to be used to fight fire, and the top floor has a billiard room with Victorian games and stereoscopes. From there, visitors can climb to the top of the tower for a view of the surrounding land. The village includes ice and milk houses, a piggery, blacksmith and wheelwright shop, a gristmill, general store, post office and more.
After Wharton’s death, the land was managed by a trust until 1954, when the state bought Batsto and the surrounding 96,000 acres. Ten years later, it opened as a State Historic Site, and today is on the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places.
We walked along the nature trail, identifying the flora we learned about in the visitors center. A visit to the Nature Center open Wednesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. answered a question we’d long pondered: how to distinguish a butterfly from a moth. Butterflies often have brilliant colors, moths tend to be more in the brown-gray family; moths have a fatter furrier body than butterflies; butterfly antenna end in balls, or clubs, whereas moth antenna splay out in a feathery way; butterflies are usually diurnal, and moths are active at night; moths rest with their wings spread, and butterflies often close their wings together while in repose.
The visitors center at Batsto Village in Wharton State Forest, Route
542, Hammonton, is open daily 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; grounds are open dawn to dusk.
Admission is free but there is a parking fee on weekends and holidays from Memorial
Day to Labor Day. Mansion tour $2, $1 ages 6-11. For information, call (609) 561-0024.
On the Web: www.batstovillage.org.
Whispers in the Pines: A Naturalist in the Northeast is available in area
bookstores or from Rutgers University Press: rutgerspress.rutgers.edu