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.

A profile of William Penn by Andrew Murphy

January 4, 2019

Mur­phy is a polit­i­cal sci­ence prof in New Jer­sey and has writ­ten a new bio of William Penn. I sus­pect this Aeon post is a bit of spon­sored con­tent to pro­mote the book but it’s still worth a read:

Penn was a man of para­dox­i­cal qual­i­ties. He espoused a rad­i­cal­ly egal­i­tar­i­an Quak­er the­ol­o­gy, insist­ing that some­thing divine resided with­in each indi­vid­ual, yet he owned slaves on his Amer­i­can estate. He praised rep­re­sen­ta­tive insti­tu­tions such as par­lia­ment and the jury sys­tem, but spent years in hid­ing for his loy­al­ty to an abso­lutist king. ‘I am like to be an adopt­ed Amer­i­can,’ he wrote short­ly after arriv­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia in 1682, but spent only four of his remain­ing 36 years there. And he was chron­i­cal­ly inca­pable of man­ag­ing mon­ey, spend­ing eight months in an Eng­lish debtors’ prison in his 60s, even while his colony quick­ly became a com­mer­cial success. 

https://​aeon​.co/​i​d​e​a​s​/​h​e​s​-​n​o​t​-​t​h​e​-​g​u​y​-​o​n​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​o​a​t​s​-​h​e​s​-​m​u​c​h​-​m​o​r​e​-​i​n​t​e​r​e​s​t​ing

The inside story of The Jersey Shutdown, 2017

July 7, 2017

The Chris Christie beach memes are fun­ny of course but I talked to more than a few local res­i­dents who won­dered what the state shut­down was about. The Star Ledger has gone deep and inter­viewed the play­ers to find out just what hap­pened ear­li­er this week:

When it end­ed ear­ly on the fourth day, New Jer­sey had been treat­ed to a remark­able polit­i­cal spec­ta­cle, even by Tren­ton stan­dards, com­plete with duel­ing press con­fer­ences, nasty back­room shout­ing match­es, and even pro­pa­gan­da posters.  Some of it played out pub­licly — very pub­licly. What did­n’t is told here, the inside sto­ry of what caused — and what final­ly set­tled — the New Jer­sey gov­ern­ment shut­down of 2017.

It’s espe­cial­ly depress­ing to read the kind of horse trad­ing that was going on behind the scenes: oth­er mea­sures float­ed to end the stand­off. It was a game to see which con­stituen­cy the politi­cians might all be able to agree to screw over. I pre­sume this is nor­mal Tren­ton pol­i­tics but it’s not good gov­ern­ing and the ram­i­fi­ca­tions are felt through­out the state.

Read: The inside story of The Jersey Shutdown, 2017

New Yorker New Yorker New Yorker

November 9, 2016

Web­sites are start­ing to talk about a Don­ald Trump pres­i­den­tial cab­i­net and the names high­light a curios­i­ty of this elec­tion: many of the prin­ci­ple insid­ers come from North­east Cor­ri­dor states that vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton. Rudolph Giu­liani and Chris Christie, are, like the whole Trump fam­i­ly, metro New York­ers and as far as I know Newt Gin­grich lives in north­ern Virginia.

I’ve lived in Chris Christie’s New Jer­sey since he was elect­ed gov­er­nor and I find it real­ly hard to believe he’s sud­den­ly going to have a strong inter­est in the Mid­west­ern red states that gave Trump the win. You can point to VP-elect Mike Pence of Indi­ana, but as far as I can tell he was only brought on for strate­gic rea­sons and is not part of the Trump circle.

What real­ly can Trump do to bring back the good pay­ing jobs that dis­ap­peared decades ago? Our econ­o­my has been shift­ing regard­less of which par­ty occu­pies the Oval Office. There’s sops and pork to be doled out, but the nation­al econ­o­my has been cen­tral­iz­ing in the big coastal cities that our new polit­i­cal lead­ers call home (the same would have been true with a Clin­ton pres­i­den­cy). What if Trump’s elec­tion is the ulti­mate prank: red states sell­ing their vote to a New York devel­op­er who will most­ly con­tin­ue to devel­op the New York-to-DC corridor?

Crows Woods in Haddonfield NJ

May 31, 2015

The blog­ger behind South Jer­sey Trails orga­nized a “dads’ hike” today in a small pre­serve along the upper reach­es of the Coop­er River.

The pre­serve is remark­ably inter­est­ing despite its rel­a­tive­ly small size and posi­tion­ing between soc­cer fields and train lines. There’s lots of hills ands wet­lands. We saw two tur­tles fight­ing and a snake of some sort swirling around an eddy in brack­ish iron-filled bog water. There was a lot of flow­er­ing moun­tain lau­rel, one of my favorite wood­land flowers.

Many local trails in deep woods are on land that has seen waves of devel­op­ment over the past two hun­dred years but a check of the 1930 New Jer­sey aer­i­al sur­vey shows that this same patch was deep woods then.
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So why is Pea Patch Island (supposedly) owned by Delaware?

September 8, 2014

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How did a sand­bar halfway between New Jer­sey and Delaware become the prop­er­ty of one state and not the other?

The British roy­al gov­ern­ment was noto­ri­ous­ly slop­py in its award­ing of land grants in its colonies. There’s a lot of bound­ary ambi­gu­i­ty and over­lap­ping claims. With Amer­i­can inde­pen­dence, the task for ref­er­ee­ing fell to the new fed­er­al government.

The spe­cif­ic prob­lem of Pea Patch was as young as the nation itself. Accord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny record­ed in the 1837 records of the U.S. Sen­ate, Pea Patch was formed around the time of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion when a ship loaded with peas report­ed­ly sunk there (smells of a tall tale to me but I’ll let it stand). Allu­vial deposits formed a sand­bank around the wreck and it even­tu­al­ly coa­lesced into a full-fledged island.

When claims over­lap on an island in the mid­dle of a bound­ary riv­er, it’s typ­i­cal to look at two mea­sures: the first and most obvi­ous is to see if it’s clos­er to one side’s river­bank. The oth­er is to look at ship­ping chan­nels and use this as a de fac­to bound­ary. Accord­ing the the Sen­ate tes­ti­mo­ny, Pea Patch Island is both clos­er to New Jer­sey and on the New Jer­sey side of the ear­ly nineteenth-century ship­ping channel.

There’s also human fac­tors to con­sid­er: accord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny in the Con­gres­sion­al Record the island was gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered a part of N.J.‘s Salem Coun­ty through the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. In 1813, New Jer­sey res­i­dent Hen­ry Gale bought Pea Patch Island and began devel­op­ing fish­eries on it. New Jer­sey for­mal­ly min­ut­ed the island as his prop­er­ty, con­firm­ing the land deeds and giv­ing it to his “heirs and assigns for ever [sic].”

State own­er­ship of Pea Patch would seem to be a pret­ty straight-forward deci­sion then: geo­graph­i­cal­ly New Jer­sey’s, cul­tur­al­ly a part of Salem Coun­ty, and owned by a South Jer­sey businessperson.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Gale, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment thought it was a good strate­gic loca­tion for a new fort. They offered him $30,000 but he did­n’t think it was a fair price. They did­n’t want to nego­ti­ate and so made a side deal with the State of Delaware. They decid­ed the state bound­ary line should be drawn to the east of the island to make it a part of Delaware. The state declared Hen­ry Gale a squat­ter and gave full own­er­ship of the island to the U.S. War Depart­ment. Gale was forcibly evict­ed, his build­ings demol­ished, his fish­ery busi­ness ruined. It does­n’t take a con­spir­acist to imag­ine that the Con­gres­sion­al Delaware del­e­ga­tion got some­thing nice for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in this ruse.

(Lat­er on, con­tin­u­ing bound­ary dis­putes between the two states led to the truly-bizarre geo­graph­ic odd­i­ty that is the 12-Mile Cir­cle. Any­thing built off the New Jer­sey coast into the Delaware Riv­er is Delaware’s. This still reg­u­lar­ly sparks law­suits between the states. If you could get behind the scenes I imag­ine you could set a whole Boardwalk-Empire-like show in the Delaware land grant office.)

A cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er the crum­bling ruins of Fort Delaware would come under the admin­is­tra­tion of the Delaware Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources and Envi­ron­men­tal Con­trol. The DNERC folks do a great job run­ning Fort Delaware. When read­ing up on this I was sur­prised to find Hen­ry Gale’s name. My wife’s fam­i­ly has Salem Coun­ty Gales so Hen­ry is at least some sort of dis­tant cousin of my kids. I think Delaware should give us a spe­cial toot on the fer­ry horn every time they land back on the soil of their ances­tral home.

Three-fort touring

September 1, 2014

The three-fort tour from Ft Mott near Salem, New Jer­sey, to Ft Delaware on Pea Patch Island (de fac­to Delaware), to Delaware City, Delaware and adja­cent Ft DuPont.

A few weeks ago Yum­my­gal at South​jer​sey​ex​plor​er​.com wrote up a trip report on The Three Forts Fer­ry Tour. It didn’t take more than two min­utes of texts before my wife and I decid­ed we would recre­ate this.

It’s wasn’t so easy at first. I spent way too long on the park system’s web­site try­ing to fig­ure out how to board the fer­ry at Ft Mott on the New Jer­sey side. Every option I tried had me board in near­by Salem, N.J. It wasn’t till I was home that I read that the Ft Mott stop had been out of com­mis­sion until ear­ly this sum­mer because of Sandy and that Salem had been the alter­nate board­ing loca­tion. The web­site hadn’t been updated.

Once we got to the dock we saw there was no tick­et kiosk. Once the fer­ry came in we found they couldn’t swipe a cred­it card onboard (real­ly? can’t any mod­ern smart­phone han­dle that?, but I digress…). The only place they could han­dle a cred­it card was the far end, in Delaware City. We’d have to dock on Fort Delaware/Pea Patch Island but stay in the boat and con­tin­ue to this city. We’d hadn’t even real­ly planned to nec­es­sar­i­ly go to Delaware City but we end­ed up spend­ing much of our day there.

Delaware City was a small port town whose claim to fame was its loca­tion as the east­ern ter­mi­nus of the orig­i­nal nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Chesa­peake and Delaware Canal. The mod­ern canal bypass­es it a few miles to the south, so Delaware City is a bit frozen in time.

First stop: Crab­by Dick’s, one of three eater­ies rec­om­mend­ed to us (the oth­ers being a pub and an Ital­ian restau­rant). Being a veg­e­tar­i­an I don’t get into this sort of a restau­rant very often but they had veg­gie burg­ers and cre­ative sweet fries (cinnamon-covered with an apple but­ter dip – yum!). Luck­i­ly it was near­ly emp­ty around noon in a Sun­day so our trou­ble­mak­ing kids didn’t cause too much commotion.

Next door was a small ice cream shop. The tem­per­a­tures were in the 90s so this was an obvi­ous stop.

What we should have done next is wan­der the town until the next fer­ry to Pea Patch Island and its fort. One of our par­ty was deter­mined to see all three forts so we set out for Ft DuPont. It’s adja­cent to Delaware City’s dock and down­town as the crow flies. But we aren’t crows, or fish. DuPont’s on the oth­er side of the old canal. You have to walk about a mile to the first bridge that cross­es it, a rick­ety one at that, then make a sharp left to trav­el in the same direc­tion you had just come from, only on the canal’s south side.

There’s no signs for the fort. Even Yum­my­girl had got­ten lost on her trip so I knew to rely on my phone’s maps. Most of Ft DuPon­t’s acreage is a large cam­pus dot­ted with an odd assort­ment of run-down ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary build­ings sur­round­ing an old parade field. The camp had been a major deploy­ment cen­ter dur­ing WW II and had also served as a POW camp for Ger­mans. The state’s been try­ing to repur­pose it in recent years but it’s an odd assort­ment of halfway house ser­vices and nation­al guard asso­ci­a­tions, stuck in between crum­bling build­ings that will nev­er find a new role.

At the far end of all this a nature trail going through what remains of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Ft DuPont. Walk­ing it is a bit like tour­ing a jungle-covered Aztec city: every so often a ruin sticks out of the trees and tan­gled vines. It’s an interesting-enough trail but not worth a four mile round-trip hike with four kids in 90 degree heat. We were able to beg a ride back from a park ranger fin­ish­ing her shift thank good­ness but much of our day was sit­ting under trees drink­ing the last of our water.

Back at the Delaware City fer­ry office, we bought a small for­tune of water from the vend­ing machine till the next (and final) boat to Pea Patch Island. This is typ­i­cal­ly the des­ti­na­tion of the tourists but by this time we only had about 45 min­utes before the last boat from the island to Jer­sey. We had an extra half hour as the boat wait­ed in dock for a spec­tac­u­lar storm to pass over the river.

We’ll def­i­nite­ly return but prob­a­bly skip Delaware City except for pos­si­bly a meal.

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