Forward to Resurrecting Ghosts

Dawn and November break on Fort Dix in the same ways, cold and windy, revealing none of the movements on the quiet dirt roads I drive, unnamed roads connecting in a web around the firing ranges, mortar ranges, long-shot ranges. At 6 a.m., even Fort Dix is silent. Here in the pines, the sand collects everywhere in flats and piles, memories like being twelve and riding to the shore, when those sands meant boardwalks and sunburns, new bathing suits and boyfriends. It is oddly beautiful, even out on the ranges, if you don’t think about the time you are in, and just watch the birds float above Hanover Dam, and listen to the rustle of leaves, and the beep of the camera battery as you shoot every angle, trying to remember.

All of these unnamed things, and no one is out brand-naming them.

A line of Hummers drive by, helmets and gunners perched through the tops, silent and eerie in the pooling light. Like statues, or ghosts, so much less real than the imagined 19th Century I see all around me. A leaf blows onto my notebook and while my hand moves to brush it away, my head turns to watch the procession, in a dream. A clipped yell cracks through the wind, and the water, and the mood — “hey.” I brush it away too, and sand from my eyes, and the relentless leaves.

And then the crews arrive, construction crews to replace the dam, cranes and tractors, sheet pilings and concrete, hardhats and aversions. I put my cameras and notebooks away in the trunk of the car, and slowly put on my safety vest.

My hands get cold by 9 a.m. these days. My stomach growls before ten. And in certain, semi-circular dreaming, I spend my days staring at earth being moved. Earth that moves faster than me. I fall asleep against the banking, and feel hands on me. “Wake up, Ariel,” says the operator, “it’s lunchtime.”

Ariel. So it goes.

I am here to study Hanover Furnace, or rather, the place that once was Hanover Furnace. A ghost town, a forgotten place. My place.

The Pine Barrens, like many of America’s rural places, are dotted with the memories and ghosts of long-abandoned, largely forgotten towns. They are places with peculiar and unique names, names like “Ong’s Hat” and “Comical Corner;” they are places with names that are evocative of the peculiar and unique heritage of the Pine Barrens themselves. Their power is undeniable, even today, and to explorers and Pinelands historians alike, there is no emotion quite the same as the feeling of personal discovery when one breaks through a wall of brush only to find oneself standing amidst remnant walls and cellar pits, amidst the very skeletons of the decaying and decayed places where whole towns once thrived.

Authors such as H.C. Beck and Charles Boyer elevated these Pinelands ruins to a cult status with their seminal publications, and now hundreds of people each year seek them out on the weekends, and dedicate websites, and journals, and countless articles to them. Rather than fading even more distantly into the past to disappear forever, these ghost towns are experiencing a veritable renaissance amongst Pinelands enthusiasts.

And yet, despite the fact that many more people have visited most of these towns after their abandonment than ever lived in them during their zeniths, it is difficult to put flesh on those bones of bog iron foundations, difficult to imagine the real and tangible daily lives of the people who lived there. It is the memory, and not the place, that makes it so magical to us. It is a memory of lovers stealing off into the woods and getting caught, a memory of quarrels and murders, a memory of marriage celebrations and of grieving deaths, a memory of work and of playful idles.

When we stand in the ruins of a ghost town, we cannot forget to remember. We cannot snap pictures and hike through without remembering Christmases and wars. History and discovery are dynamic, and with each step forward we become part of this tribute to humanity; the ghosts of the Pines are with us, in our history, in our culture and in our collective Pinelands memory. We cannot stand in the ruins of a ghost town without remembering ourselves.

Hanover Furnace is a pile of slag by the Rancocas River.

I take it with me everywhere I go.

Resurrecting Ghosts is an in-progress book by Ariadne T. Moore, professional archaeologist and local historian. Tentatively to be published in Spring 2006 by Rutgers University Press, the book presents a new and revised look at Hanover Furnace, an early Pinelands bog iron furnace, the people that lived there, and the significance of its memory in local folklore and culture.

Ariadne has worked on hundreds of archaeological sites throughout the Mid-Atlantic region and in Europe, is a member of numerous professional organizations, and holds graduate degrees in both archaeology and French. All material copyrighted by Ariadne T. Moore, 2005.