Boom time at edge of Pinelands
New priorities transform towns
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/10/05
BY KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER
Community identity in Manchester still relies on local place names — post office addresses such as Lakehurst and Whiting — and the poetic labels left by real estate developers, Pine Lake Park and Cedar Glen Lakes among them.
Travel a bit off Route 70, and other localities emerge. Beckerville, Pasadena, Roosevelt City, Buckingham. Each have their own stories and contributions to the community's character and history.
But in the coming years, Manchester and Lakehurst could anchor one corner of the Shore's fastest-growing suburban cluster, a place where the nexus of population growth, available land and commuter highways come together to transform the landscape.
Developers attracted by cheap land have turned Manchester's lonely pine woods into "Florida North," building thousands of retirement homes since the 1960s.
Now new priorities have arrived in the real estate marketplace; young families looking for small-town atmosphere are restoring Lakehurst homes, while others looking for open space venture down roads that a few years back were haunted only by deer hunters and the memories of long-gone rural factories and train whistles.
Beckerville was a road lined with small farms, a black neighborhood peopled by longtime residents and newer arrivals looking for small plots to raise crops and livestock. In the late 1920s, a young farmer named James Alex Robertson arrived from Virginia, acquired 250 acres along the road and helped other families by selling land to them for first homes. Today Beckerville is still a quiet stretch of homesteads with fields and paddocks.
Whiting is the town center on Manchester's west side and serves as the post office address for thousands of homes in surrounding retirement communities, as Lakehurst does for the township's eastern half. Originally a train station on the old Central Railroad of New Jersey, Whiting was the last community that passengers on the famous Blue Comet express saw before they plunged into the deep Pine Barrens toward Atlantic City.
Just southwest of Whiting, maps show an impressive grid of streets labeled Roosevelt City, and the street names recall America of the early 20th century: The names of industrial cities, generals and statesmen like President Theodore Roosevelt were appropriated by the original real estate developers back then.
Most of the roads remain mere "paper streets," complete only on maps. But Roosevelt City is, in a way, finally living up to its original billing. Large semi-custom homes and big lawns have been carved out of the pine forest, amid low rolling hills.
Westward across Route 539 is Pasadena Road, another hopefully named real estate venture a century past. Near the old railroad line — now grown over with small pines between its ties — lie the ruins of a brick factory and terra cotta plant, dating as far back as the 1870s when local clay deposits supplied rural industry.
For a century, Pasadena and nearby Buckingham had the reputation of ghost towns, popularized by writer and Pine Barrens folklore enthusiast Henry Charlton Beck, who in the 1930s wandered these old roads in search of ruins. Drive down Pasadena Road now and you'll see the changes — and the traffic.
At the very end of the road, some explorers who penetrate the woods around Union Clay Works manage to find an old cemetery that conveys the harshness of 19th-century life in the pines. In one of his visits Beck spotted a young girl's grave marker that said it all, in an expression of parental grief: "Put away your dresses/You won't need them any more."
Those old clay miners wouldn't recognize the scene today a few miles up the old train line. For all its strict building controls in the forest, the state Pinelands comprehensive management plan also provides for development in designated growth areas, and the junction of Route 70, Route 539 and Lacey Road is crawling with earth-moving machines preparing for road improvements and commercial construction.
New priorities transform towns
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/10/05
BY KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER
Community identity in Manchester still relies on local place names — post office addresses such as Lakehurst and Whiting — and the poetic labels left by real estate developers, Pine Lake Park and Cedar Glen Lakes among them.
Travel a bit off Route 70, and other localities emerge. Beckerville, Pasadena, Roosevelt City, Buckingham. Each have their own stories and contributions to the community's character and history.
But in the coming years, Manchester and Lakehurst could anchor one corner of the Shore's fastest-growing suburban cluster, a place where the nexus of population growth, available land and commuter highways come together to transform the landscape.
Developers attracted by cheap land have turned Manchester's lonely pine woods into "Florida North," building thousands of retirement homes since the 1960s.
Now new priorities have arrived in the real estate marketplace; young families looking for small-town atmosphere are restoring Lakehurst homes, while others looking for open space venture down roads that a few years back were haunted only by deer hunters and the memories of long-gone rural factories and train whistles.
Beckerville was a road lined with small farms, a black neighborhood peopled by longtime residents and newer arrivals looking for small plots to raise crops and livestock. In the late 1920s, a young farmer named James Alex Robertson arrived from Virginia, acquired 250 acres along the road and helped other families by selling land to them for first homes. Today Beckerville is still a quiet stretch of homesteads with fields and paddocks.
Whiting is the town center on Manchester's west side and serves as the post office address for thousands of homes in surrounding retirement communities, as Lakehurst does for the township's eastern half. Originally a train station on the old Central Railroad of New Jersey, Whiting was the last community that passengers on the famous Blue Comet express saw before they plunged into the deep Pine Barrens toward Atlantic City.
Just southwest of Whiting, maps show an impressive grid of streets labeled Roosevelt City, and the street names recall America of the early 20th century: The names of industrial cities, generals and statesmen like President Theodore Roosevelt were appropriated by the original real estate developers back then.
Most of the roads remain mere "paper streets," complete only on maps. But Roosevelt City is, in a way, finally living up to its original billing. Large semi-custom homes and big lawns have been carved out of the pine forest, amid low rolling hills.
Westward across Route 539 is Pasadena Road, another hopefully named real estate venture a century past. Near the old railroad line — now grown over with small pines between its ties — lie the ruins of a brick factory and terra cotta plant, dating as far back as the 1870s when local clay deposits supplied rural industry.
For a century, Pasadena and nearby Buckingham had the reputation of ghost towns, popularized by writer and Pine Barrens folklore enthusiast Henry Charlton Beck, who in the 1930s wandered these old roads in search of ruins. Drive down Pasadena Road now and you'll see the changes — and the traffic.
At the very end of the road, some explorers who penetrate the woods around Union Clay Works manage to find an old cemetery that conveys the harshness of 19th-century life in the pines. In one of his visits Beck spotted a young girl's grave marker that said it all, in an expression of parental grief: "Put away your dresses/You won't need them any more."
Those old clay miners wouldn't recognize the scene today a few miles up the old train line. For all its strict building controls in the forest, the state Pinelands comprehensive management plan also provides for development in designated growth areas, and the junction of Route 70, Route 539 and Lacey Road is crawling with earth-moving machines preparing for road improvements and commercial construction.
