From Hermann to High Crossing

Yesterday I got the U-Joints on my Jeep fixed, so I was finally in shape to take a trip into the Pine Barrens. I started out on a quest to find the ruins of Hermann City, the glassworks that lasted for six months before closing as a result of the panic of 1873.

This is actually the second time that I had tried to find it. The first time I ended up being about 1/4 mile away and hunting around a private house. Armed with more specific directions, I was able to find it in no time.

The site is in good shape. Nature - instead of vandals - is doing her part in reclaiming the land from the hand of man. You can still see some of the bricks that lined the canals that ran from the Mullica to the glassworks. At the far end of town, the remains of a well preserved house stands looking forlornly out at the Mullica.

Since I saw that traffic back up the parkway was horrible, I decided to take a long-cut home. I ended up driving up to Batsto, and was planning on taking a trip up East Sandy Ridge Road on through Friendship and then out to Rt 70 via Tabernacle. (You can see photographs that I took with my digital camera by clicking on the links in the following paragraphs.)

I ended up stopping at Washington, just to check on the state of the ruins. Fortunately vandals seem to have ignored the stables, and it looks as good as it usually does.

I then backtracked and drove down a really long, really boring road. In my head I was trying to find Mount , where it seems all roads lead to. I made a left onto “Devious-Mount” road, which as far as I could tell, doesn’t bring you to Devious at all. After backtracking around for some time, I finally found it, and found that nothing really has changed there.

It was staring to get late (around 4pm or so) so I decided to try to find my way to Friendship as quick as possible. An hour and a half later, I managed to get onto some road that looked like it was taking me towards Hampton Furnace. Fortunately the road eventually hit Carranza Road, so I made a quick turn to the South to check out Friendship.

I had been emailing a fellow Jeep Cherokee owner in Toms River, and we had been having a conversation about the Pine Barrens, and he happened to mention High Crossing , and a huge puddle there. Well it turns out that a few years ago I was wheeling with my friend Mark Rowles, who used to run JeepEast.com (the site is gone now), and we went through that with his modified Wrangler, and my stock Grand Cherokee. Anyway, I saw the picture that Rick sent, and thought that it actually blocked the way to High Crossing. Long story short, I was wrong, since the puddle is on the other side of the tracks… but wait — the tracks are gone now! And so is the insanely high grade. You can cross over it in a Honda Civic now. So it seems the High Crossing is neither high nor a crossing anymore.

I ended the day by stopping at the Emilio Carranza Memorial. I’m happy to say that it was in perfect shape and not defaced by paintballs like Robert Blanda found it to be.

By now it was getting dark and it was starting to rain, so I made the long journey back to Bricktown via Tabernacle and Rt. 70. I ended up spending about 6 hours in the Pine Barrens, and am still trying to get all of the ticks off.