Yesterday Ro & I visited Beaver Swamp, parked at the end of the pot-holed dirt road, walked across the earthen dam and thru the wooded "island". Lots of questions: who built that dam? when? What for? It's in the middle of nowhere, didn't see signs of a mill, doesn't look like cranberry bog country. Yet it took a LOT of work to build that dam. And where did all that fill come from, no borrow pit was obvious?
Beaver Swamp WMA
- Thread starter johnnyb
- Start date
Johnny, would this be the same place, where it says:
"Conservation: In 1992, restoration of the dam at Clint Mill Pond was completed to preserve the lake to ensure the availability of foraging opportunities for the site’s nesting Bald Eagles and other wildlife."
http://www.njaudubon.org/SectionIBBA/IBBASiteGuide.aspx?sk=3030
"Conservation: In 1992, restoration of the dam at Clint Mill Pond was completed to preserve the lake to ensure the availability of foraging opportunities for the site’s nesting Bald Eagles and other wildlife."
http://www.njaudubon.org/SectionIBBA/IBBASiteGuide.aspx?sk=3030
I visited there some time back for the Eagle nest, not sure if it was a WMA then. Regarding the dam, from the IBA guide;
The Ludlam name dates back to pre-revolution.
Johnnyb, we will be down that way later this month. Is this where the dam is and did you use the obvious road to get in?
http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.152481320239666&lng=-74.82175368993108&z=14&type=terrain&gpx=
Are there another areas to hike there? It looks pretty dense and wet.
Ed
http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.152481320239666&lng=-74.82175368993108&z=14&type=terrain&gpx=
Are there another areas to hike there? It looks pretty dense and wet.
Ed
They must really blast away at the waterfowl in that pond. I see at least 5 duck blinds. This one is well hidden and far upstream. Too bad the water level is down. The hunters have probably lost some access to this one (at least in the year it was photographed in the first shot).
I"ve been in that duck blind.it's huge.I was bushwacking to the beech island just south of it and missed the island and hit the duck blind.From the blind I could see the island.This was in my map and compass day when you had to hold a bearing for a mile to hit a 50 yard long island with no pine trees on it for guidance.
from the end of the road that leads to the dam your only 100 yards from a 7 ft circumference baldcypress planted there over 100 years ago.
If you look just to the east of this blind you'll see the island i was aiming for.I came in from a piece of high ground that stretches into the swamp from the northeast.
Yes, that Island is what I zoomed in to look at. You and I think alike.
PS: that ridge you walked in on is a whopping 20 feet above sea level. Get a nose bleed?
Thanks 46er for the background answers.
PBX - we didn't penetrate into it very far - wrong clothes (plan: dinner at Lucky Bones in Cape May - unpaid advertisement).
campbell" we accessed by the dirt road per the WMA website. Some big potholes but OK when we were there. Piles of dirt/sand for repair looked like they'd been there for a while. We walked across dam and into woods but stopped when trail split and narrowed and went into bushes - we lacked anti-tick clothing. No eagle, lots of small birds in ashes and trees, need to spend time to get photos of them.
Manumuskin - we missed the big cypress, we didn't go off the dam trail (can take that two ways...).
PBX - we didn't penetrate into it very far - wrong clothes (plan: dinner at Lucky Bones in Cape May - unpaid advertisement).
campbell" we accessed by the dirt road per the WMA website. Some big potholes but OK when we were there. Piles of dirt/sand for repair looked like they'd been there for a while. We walked across dam and into woods but stopped when trail split and narrowed and went into bushes - we lacked anti-tick clothing. No eagle, lots of small birds in ashes and trees, need to spend time to get photos of them.
Manumuskin - we missed the big cypress, we didn't go off the dam trail (can take that two ways...).
Best access to the deep portion Beaver Swamp is off Rt. 9. Go west on Brooks ave., cross power line, and follow woods road to back portion of swamp.
Yes that ridge is gorgeous.There is an old road/trail down the length of it from the road,or there was back in the 90's anyway. I jumped off here http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.155483038484746&lng=-74.80656165283204&z=15&type=topo&gpx=
The swamp along the creek actually is backed up and flooded quite a ways up from the pond.It was like beiing in a cypress swamp only maple.I waded through trees up to my waist for several hundred yards. I was trying to hold a bearing from the ridge to the island taken from the topo.I was looking for pin trees which usually means high ground or at least semi high ground when in a flooded swamp.I did not see the island because there is not a pine tree on it.It's primarily beech and not high enough to camp on unless your a hammock camper,it's semi boggy most of it.It was no doubt drier before they dammed the pond up.I missed the island by maybe 50 yards to the right and walked staight into that duck blind.I climbed up in it and looked to my left and clearly swam the island from it.The beech were indistinguishable from maple at a distance.I was out there last winter to the sw of the island.There is a lone tree here http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.148111559068994&lng=-74.81425422828676&z=18&type=nj2015&gpx= that i thought might be an island.This is some of the roughest country i ever traversed.I came in from the west.I got to within 100 ft of the tree and could see it but to reach it would have involved total submersion in a log infested (You might just well die here) type of creek.I could see the tree and it was a maple so I could not tell how high the ground it was growing on was but beings it was just one big maple in a sea of devastation I don't think it was high ground.If it was summer I"d of went for it.
Ha! I know what you mean. There is a place near Bamber similar to that, but the water is only 2-3 feet deep. But under the water (and above!) it is crisscrossed with logs. Totally impossible to traverse.
PS: I use Bing Birds eye when I want to see detail on some things, like that road along the ridge.
A P.S. to the posts here.
Mark Szutarski kindlylent me his copy of Peter Kalm's "Journey into North America" used on his mid-1700's trips here. (The genus Kalmia - laurels - is named for him). In his book Kalm does not go into the Pines, but he has a lot to write about "White Cedar" - our Chamecyparis thyroids., including the following: "... In their eagerness to get White Cedar (from the New Jersey bogs) for shingles, the colonists have been ruthless. ‘Thus the inhabitants have been very busy, not only to lessen the number of these trees, but to extirpate them. entirely. ...".
Maybe that's why there are no cedars there?
Mark Szutarski kindlylent me his copy of Peter Kalm's "Journey into North America" used on his mid-1700's trips here. (The genus Kalmia - laurels - is named for him). In his book Kalm does not go into the Pines, but he has a lot to write about "White Cedar" - our Chamecyparis thyroids., including the following: "... In their eagerness to get White Cedar (from the New Jersey bogs) for shingles, the colonists have been ruthless. ‘Thus the inhabitants have been very busy, not only to lessen the number of these trees, but to extirpate them. entirely. ...".
Maybe that's why there are no cedars there?
Some areas down here still aren't covered by Birds Eye,especially many areas near the Bay. I know Bamber wasn't covered a couple years ago.Haven't scanned that area on Birds Eye since then.I remember Timber beaver being a very nice maple swamp,on the other hand the Great Cedar Swamp just north of it is anything but a cedar swamp,it is maple with the biggest masses of briars i have ever seen.It was winter and me and a friend crossed it by running along semi fallen trees and rolling across the briars in our thick winter coats.That was in my 20's. I could take a lot more abuse back then.
There were no cedars in the Greta cedar swamp where I crossed it which was just west of the old RR Grade and route 550. I crossed it where i did because i had an old book that had all the topos to south jersey with vegetation overlays and it stated there was a large tract of cedar in the middle of the swamp.This was before aerials so i trusted the overlay.They were wrong.I went right through the Cedar area and there wasn't one.All maple and briars. Now I have canoed into both ends of that swam up Dennis Creek and Cedar Creek and on Dennis creek there is a flooded dead cedar swamp at that end and on the cedar Creek end there are some scattered cedar but none at all where the book I got from Trenton stated they were.The overlays were from the 50's.
From an earlier time;
https://forums.njpinebarrens.com/threads/bald-cypress-tree-in-cape-may-county.3510/
Another reference;
http://www.ents-bbs.org/viewtopic.php?f=103&t=3669
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