Mouth of the Mullica

Jerseyman

Jerseyman

Piney
Sep 10, 2003
1,377
426
West New Jersey
www.jerseyman-historynowandthen.blogspot.com
bruset said:
I was looking at the USGS aerial photographs of the mouth of the Mullica River. I noticed that in alot of the marshy areas, there are really straight lines or channels that run through them. What are they?

Up by me, in Brick, some of our marshy areas have the same thing.

I'm not 100% sure they're man made. You can see them (faintly) on the NJ 1931 aerials, and very clearly on the USGS aerials.
Click to expand...

Ben:

As indicated by many others who responded to your query, the ditching you observe is related to mosquito control measures. The state government and all of its entities have produced numerous treatises on controlling this insect, but the one that you should probably examine is Thomas J. Headlee's The Mosquitoes of New Jersey and their Control, published in cooperation with numerous governmental agencies by Rutgers University Press in 1945. This work specifically addresses controlling mosquitoes in Salt Marshes. You can also examine the 1992 National Park Service publication, From Marsh to Farm : The Landscape Transformation of Coastal New Jersey written by Kimberly R. Sebold as part of the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail project. If you are interested in learning what other state publications are available relative to mosquito control, please let me know and I will assemble a bibliography of such literature.

Best regards,
Jerseyman
 
W

whitingrider

Explorer
Jun 28, 2007
193
0
Whiting
I finally had a chance to photo the drained lake in Forked River. I found out this wasn't the railroad crossing, because the old trestle is still there a bit east of this road. Only had cameraphone, though.
Bobpbx, any ideas as to whats going on?
Tom

 
bobpbx

bobpbx

Piney
Staff member
Oct 25, 2002
14,239
4,331
Pines; Bamber area
whitingrider said:
I finally had a chance to photo the drained lake in Forked River. I found out this wasn't the railroad crossing, because the old trestle is still there a bit east of this road. Only had cameraphone, though.
Bobpbx, any ideas as to whats going on?
Click to expand...

I don't rightly know Tom, but years back they felt that if they drained them off a bit, the water plants that choke the beaches would die from freezing. Maybe that's what they are trying to do.
 
W

whitingrider

Explorer
Jun 28, 2007
193
0
Whiting
Bob, you are dead-on right. Yesterday I spoke to my buddy who has been in the FRFD probably before they had trucks. That was exactly the reason and he said they do that every winter. As far as that road, that was the way across until they built the newer bridge further east. BTW, if you google map that and zoom in all the way, you can make out the road even though it's submerged.
Thanks, Tom
 
pinelandpaddler

pinelandpaddler

Piney
Apr 6, 2004
3,613
556
Galloway
Ben and all,

Looks like some of those ditches (the larger ones) were dug out for reasons other than mosquito control.

From the 41st Annual Report of the Department of Health of the State of NJ (1917):

"An extensive business in raising Seed Oysters is being conducted by the Sooy Oyster Company. They have secured from the State large riparian rights near the mouth of the Mullica, and in addition have expended considerable sums of money in dredging ditches through the adjacent meadows. These ditches are about thirty feet wide and 3 feet deep at low water and vary in length from one hundred yards to one-half mile."
 
pinelandpaddler

pinelandpaddler

Piney
Apr 6, 2004
3,613
556
Galloway
Thanks, Guy. I also found in the 26th Annual Report of the New Jersey State Agricultural Experiment Station that several of these large ditches had been excavated in 1904.

Incidentally, there is an interesting legal case involving the Sooy Oyster Co. that you might be interested in.
 
pinelandpaddler

pinelandpaddler

Piney
Apr 6, 2004
3,613
556
Galloway
From the 27th Annual Report of the NJ State Agricultural Experiment Station:

"The main part of last season's work was done at the Barnegat laboratory, but frequent trips were made to Tuckerton and also up the Mullica to Swimming Over, where the Messrs. Sooy have vast oyster plantations of an experimental nature upon riparian grants. Here, and also further up the river, the Sooys have excavated, at great expense, great ditches, twenty feet wide, a thousand feet long and six feet deep, uniting different reaches of the crooked river and through which the tidal currents flow. One of the ditches has been dammed up so as to make a claire for experiments in artificial propagation. These facilities were placed at the service of the biologist, and a certain amount of preliminary experimenting was done, so that we have really added a third station to our list, as it seems advisable to pay more attention to questions that can be solved on the Mullica in the years to come than we have hitherto done."
 
pinelandpaddler

pinelandpaddler

Piney
Apr 6, 2004
3,613
556
Galloway
Guy,

Swimming-Over Point was where the Leeds Point Quakers swam with their horses across the river on their way to the Little Egg Harbor Meeting.. It was supposedly here:
http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.55519739874023&lng=-74.4189190864563&z=17&type=h&gpx=

Not exactly a walk in the park, over all those meadows and across a wide and deep Mullica. No doubt Jerseyman is correct in his musings about how this, and not Quaker bridge, was the site where numerous Friends lost their lives to drowning.
 
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