John's Woods Preserve

[Menantico]

A couple of months ago, I took a walk through John's Woods Preserve, located just west of Weymouth Furnace. I pass by it often and decided it would be a nice spot for a short hike. Named after John Henry Trescher, the area features some interesting elevation changes and easy-to-find geocaches. I think I even spotted some hemlock trees, though I could be mistaken.

The preserve is full of ruins, which I assume are remnants of the village and the requisite buildings for industry. I’ve read somewhere that there was a mansion in the area associated with the Richards family, separate from the Astion manse. Has anyone else wandered through these woods and is there any evidence of a mansion ever existing on this land?

 

[Boyd]

Haven't been there myself and don't know anything about the history, sorry. But I have noticed it in the openspace data I use for my maps. Since this is Atlantic County, we now have lots of historical aerials. Maybe they can offer some insight? There's some kind of development (campground/trailer park maybe??) in that general area that first appears in 1970. By 2000, it's almost completely overgrown.

 

[teleflux]

It's a great place, I just went there a bunch of times this past spring. Beautiful views of the river on the high banks.

The area was part of the Weymouth village, and yes there were 2 mansions there. When you're on the trail you'll come to a fairly large hole with some rubble and ruins which I believe was the Colwell mansion. A little ways past that was the (older?) Richards mansion. I don't remember a ton of the details off the top of my head, but there's a good history of the area, and map, in Barbara Solem-Stull's Ghost Towns book.

The preserve was also the landscaped grounds for the mansion and some very unusual non-native trees remain mixed in with the oaks and pines. There are at least 3 European Larch, a Bald Cypress, a (huge) Eastern Hemlock and many of it's children scattered about, Tulip trees lining the trail, plus 2 massive Oaks by the riverbank, and 2 interesting looking Maples. If you walk down the hill past the Cypress into the swamp you can see some Cypress knees.

I got the tip on the trees from this guy on YouTube, he might be a member of this site?: https://www.youtube.com/@MillerMeteor74

Here are his videos about the preserve:

I'll see if I can post some photos I took of the trees.

 

[manumuskin]

I was there many years ago.Saw the big oaks and a really big cellar hole,don't know if it was the mansion.I did not know there were cypress down there.

 

[bobpbx]

That looks like Barry in those videos you posted. He was a member here many years ago. He moved out of state with his family is what I understand.

 

[Boyd]

Interesting... I saw a bunch of posts from BarryC when I was going through old threads to fix broken terraserver and topozone links. Looks like the last time he posted was 2003, I didn't join until 2004.

 

[teleflux]

Here are some tree photos.

Big oak.

Another big oak, not sure what kind this one is.

One of the maples. Maybe a Silver Maple?

European Larch

Eastern Hemlock. There's a ring of baby trees surrounding it.

In the swamp.

Lot's of these tiny ones around.

Bald Cypress

Cypress knees down in the cedar swamp.