All,
I have reason to believe that a fake Bass River State Forest has been showing up on topo maps from as far back as 1942. I will explain.
I was looking over the Bass River area using topo maps, and decided to concentrate on this particular section of state forest near Harrisville and the Ives Branch . Notice it says Bass River State Forest on the map. You can either click on the link or just look at the map right below the link. Same location.
http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.64379442011467&lng=-74.48697108428956&z=15&type=topo&gpx=
I then wanted to get a general idea of the time frame that it first showed up on topo maps and using HistoricAerials.com I found that to be 1942.
Notice the general outline of the property in the below map from 1942. In all future topos the quality of the outline improved, and Bass River State Forest it actually mentioned just like the above photo.
Now here is where I started to have doubts. I decided to use Mobile Atlas Creator that Boyd has told all of you about to make a topo kmz file to load into Google Earth to see it's location in relationship to aerial photos and my records. When I did this I noticed that the BRSF property overlapped substantially a piece of land the state acquired in 1982. I have the survey information for this 1982 acquisition so I know I am correct.
Notice the blue line which is the property line the state acquired in 1982, crosses quite a bit into BRSF. (The portion that actually says "Bass River State") The owner of the blue line property was a man named Frank J Cerza. It is Block 75 lot 6 and consists of 235.233 acres.
I then made a parcel kmz using Mobil Atlas Creator (again, thanks Boyd) and overlapped that in Google Earth. We can see that the 1982 purchase is very close to being exact and since it is green we also have a clue that the state owns it as I mentioned above. The yellow pins are the BRSF boundary for comparison and you can see the BRSF from 1942 is inside the 1982 purchase property at some locations.
And to further bolster my belief, I did a search of Block 75 Lot 2 which is much of the top right portion of the BRSF and what do you think I found? That lot is privately owned as WAS the 1982 lot. Both of those lots almost entirely make up the BRSF property.
And going even further, I searched Block 75 Lot 5 which is almost completely in the BRSF, and sure enough that is privately owned by Cutts.
So the question is how can this even be a state forest when it does not even have a Block and Lot parcel and much of the property was private until at least 1982? It is as if someone just picked random locations and made a state forest out of it. I will soon be searching the property corners that I have access to and will see if I can come up with state monuments. If I do, this will need further research to see what was actually going on back before 1942.
Guy
I have reason to believe that a fake Bass River State Forest has been showing up on topo maps from as far back as 1942. I will explain.
I was looking over the Bass River area using topo maps, and decided to concentrate on this particular section of state forest near Harrisville and the Ives Branch . Notice it says Bass River State Forest on the map. You can either click on the link or just look at the map right below the link. Same location.
http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.64379442011467&lng=-74.48697108428956&z=15&type=topo&gpx=
I then wanted to get a general idea of the time frame that it first showed up on topo maps and using HistoricAerials.com I found that to be 1942.
Notice the general outline of the property in the below map from 1942. In all future topos the quality of the outline improved, and Bass River State Forest it actually mentioned just like the above photo.
Now here is where I started to have doubts. I decided to use Mobile Atlas Creator that Boyd has told all of you about to make a topo kmz file to load into Google Earth to see it's location in relationship to aerial photos and my records. When I did this I noticed that the BRSF property overlapped substantially a piece of land the state acquired in 1982. I have the survey information for this 1982 acquisition so I know I am correct.
Notice the blue line which is the property line the state acquired in 1982, crosses quite a bit into BRSF. (The portion that actually says "Bass River State") The owner of the blue line property was a man named Frank J Cerza. It is Block 75 lot 6 and consists of 235.233 acres.
I then made a parcel kmz using Mobil Atlas Creator (again, thanks Boyd) and overlapped that in Google Earth. We can see that the 1982 purchase is very close to being exact and since it is green we also have a clue that the state owns it as I mentioned above. The yellow pins are the BRSF boundary for comparison and you can see the BRSF from 1942 is inside the 1982 purchase property at some locations.
And to further bolster my belief, I did a search of Block 75 Lot 2 which is much of the top right portion of the BRSF and what do you think I found? That lot is privately owned as WAS the 1982 lot. Both of those lots almost entirely make up the BRSF property.
And going even further, I searched Block 75 Lot 5 which is almost completely in the BRSF, and sure enough that is privately owned by Cutts.
So the question is how can this even be a state forest when it does not even have a Block and Lot parcel and much of the property was private until at least 1982? It is as if someone just picked random locations and made a state forest out of it. I will soon be searching the property corners that I have access to and will see if I can come up with state monuments. If I do, this will need further research to see what was actually going on back before 1942.
Guy
