Spending the day at Amatol with a friend

[gipsie]

A friend and I have been looking at maps of Amatol and have spent a lot of time pouting over maps and stuff. After receiving a response from Kevinhooa with a great map link, we set out today to find some of the buildings. We are on semi-limited time, as he is going away for four months and leaving at the end of this month. It is definitely an obsession...

We walked the area, bushwhacking at times, and found a ton of foundations and buildings. Our goal is to be able to map out the area with locations of the buildings. Maybe even have a complete map.

When we found what we believe to be 9 ammunition (maybe storage) buildings and their rail beds, we found out that we were on private property. A white pickup pulled up and informed us of this. We did a lot of bushwhacking coming in and mentioned that we were only looking at ruins and they were very nice. I would like to find out who owns this property (I believe it is a gun club, but that is just a hunch) and ask permission to check it out more in the future, Does anyone know who it belongs to, or should I pull up the trusty old tax maps?

I didn't get a chance to take any pictures today, but will be back and hope to keep posting updates and will be working on a map to share....

 

[Kevinhooa]

Hey Gipsie, you had a great day for exploring. Sounds like you found some neat stuff as well. As far as the people that own it, when I went the guys I talked to had Tuckahoe Turf Farms hats on. That might have something to do with who owns it. I don't know if you really meant "old" tax maps but I think it's changed hands recently, but I'm not sure. But if it has changed, in the past couple of years, your going to need newer tax maps obviously. It would be a neat project to at least try and preserve some of the buildings by cutting the brush out but that would be with the permission of the owners. I have a newspaper article from the press of AC from last year talking about historical peservation of the place. Maybe a spring project.

 

[gipsie]

We took a lot of waypoints and another friend that works for the GIS department in ACCC is going to help me do some of the overlays. I would like to overlay what we found with the maps the college has of the site and also with google map or old aerial photographs.

I was not saying that the tax maps I would look at were old, just a figure of speech, but you are correct, I will be looking at newer ones. If we do not get too far before my friend is deployed, I will still be exploring the area by myself if anyone cares to meet and do some leg work. Literally.

 

[MarkBNJ]

I enjoy that area as well. One goal that I haven't accomplished yet is to explore the site of the town, which is a little southeast of the plant area.