Visiting Petty Island

June 16, 2019

As a lover of maps, I’ve often be intrigued by the envi­rons  of the Delaware Riv­er. As the tides go up and down, the time­less­ness of the riv­er becomes a kind of gen­tle solace to the indus­tri­al­iza­tion along its banks. Nowhere is this more appar­ent than on the islands which some­how remain in its course. I’ve camped at Pea Patch Island down by Delaware and found a sur­pris­ing fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in its con­vo­lut­ed own­er­ship. But clos­er to my com­mute is Pet­ty Island, sit­ting along­side the New Jer­sey main­land a short dis­tance north of the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Pet­ty Island is owned by the Cit­go oil com­pa­ny and until just a few months ago was still dot­ted with its oil tanks and a large marine car­go facil­i­ty. Satel­lite views still show this twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry indus­try. But in a very long and oftentimes-uncertain process it’s due to become part of New Jer­sey nat­ur­al lands and even­tu­al­ly to become a pre­serve. The pub­lic is gen­er­al­ly still not allowed on the island but there are occa­sion­al trips and on this past Sat­ur­day I got to tour the island.

We were very lucky to have Bob Shinn as our tour guide. He’s a walk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia of the island and the state geopol­i­tics and waves of names and com­mer­cial uses it’s been through. He lit­er­al­ly wrote the entry on Pet­ty Island in the Philadel­phia Ency­clo­pe­dia. Not sur­pris­ing­ly there’s a lot of Quak­ers in the ear­ly record­ed his­to­ry and the deed between the first Quak­er own­er and three Lenape rep­re­sen­ta­tives is intact in the Haver­ford Col­lege col­lec­tions (this deed was also a major part of a talk by Lenape – set­tler his­to­ry giv­en by Jean Soder­lund a few months ago at Ran­co­cas Meet­ing (see also her book Lenape Coun­try)).

The ever-changing, never-settled his­to­ry of the island con­tin­ues with its name. Wikipedia, Google Maps, and — most impor­tant­ly — Bob Shinn call it “Pet­ty Island,” while the guard shack, wel­come sign, NJ Audubon Soci­ety, and New Jer­sey Nat­ur­al Lands Trust adds the pos­ses­sive to make it “Pet­ty’s Island.” The lat­ter is espe­cial­ly awkward-sounding to my ears, as South Jer­sey place names char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly drop the apos­tro­phes over time (for exam­ple, the riv­er land­ing named after Cap­tain George May is now the town of “Mays Landing.”)

Rem­nants of the indus­tri­al­iza­tion remain: the mas­sive three-story load­ing facil­i­ty has been kept to become the bones of a future vis­i­tors cen­ter; the adja­cent asphalt park­ing area has just been replant­ed as a mead­ow and is most­ly a lot of rocks and short blades of grass (with some Fowler’s toads!). We were lucky enough to be the first pub­lic group to be there since this had all been cleared away.

Bonus: I did­n’t real­ize till we were about to get in our cars that South Jer­sey Trails was also on the tour. He wrote it up too! If you look care­ful­ly, I’m in the back­ground of one of the shots, and now that I’m look­ing I think that’s him in some of mine.

Camp Acagisca

June 20, 2015

A two-night scouts camp­ing trip with two of my kids to the coun­ty facil­i­ties at Camp Acagis­ca nears Mays Land­ing turned into a one night with one kid affair (my 11yo got way too mouthy when it came time to decide who was going to share a tent with dad and went home imme­di­ate­ly; the 9yo end­ed up in a melt­down mid morn­ing on the sec­ond day.)

 

Rain camp­ing

A video post­ed by Mar­tin Kel­ley (@martin_kelley) on

 

And while I assumed the name was some sort of Lenape con­struc­tion, it’s appar­ent­ly an amal­gam of Atlantic City Area Girl Scout Camp.

Derecho Storm Damage in Mays Landing

June 30, 2012

Last night a huge thun­der­storm front with a phe­nom­e­non called a dere­cho swept across South Jer­sey. Where I live in Ham­mon­ton the strangest part of it was a strobe-light effect caused by dozens of cloud-to-cloud light­ning flash­es per minute, punc­tu­at­ed by light­ning strikes. Fur­ther east into Atlantic Coun­ty winds took down incred­i­ble amounts of trees.

This morn­ing trav­eled to Mays Land­ing, which was sched­uled to host a street fes­ti­val today. A few brave mer­chants like Brown­ies Squared opened with­out pow­er and made the best of it, sell­ing refrig­er­at­ed goods at half-price. But most of the town was deal­ing with trees across downed pow­er lines. Accord­ing to NBC40 Weath­er 162,000 house­holds are with­out pow­er – con­sid­er­ably more than were out in last year’s hurricane.

Links:
* http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​D​e​r​e​cho
* https://​twit​ter​.com/​n​b​c​4​0​w​e​a​t​h​e​r​/​s​t​a​t​u​s​/​2​1​9​0​7​8​6​6​2​5​3​0​6​7​8​784