Morgan, New Jersey

Morgan, NJ in December 1962 looking east toward Raritan Bay from Route 35 and Ernston Road. Photo courtesy of Nick Gabriel.The rest of the photo showing the building of the Oak View Nursing Home can be seen at: http://www.gbtweb.com/morgan

Thus far, I have come across two sources for aerial photography of Morgan from times long past.  Both are very exciting in different ways!The first one came my way this week from Nick Gabriel who currently lives in the state of Maine. Nick spent his early childhood on Liberty Street and, like all the kids in Morgan, went to Jesse Selover Elementary School. In fact, both Nick and I had Mrs. Tuttle for Kindergarten! Nick’s family has a special place in Morgan history for a number of reasons. Firstly, Gabriel Terrace in Morgan was named for Nick’s grandfather – Nicholas Gabriel. You can easily see Gabriel Terrace in this photo (can you find it?).In 1962/63, Nick’s father Vincent and Uncle Frank (“Gabriel Brothers Builders”) built the Oak View Nursing Home on Ernston Road, next to the Garden State Parkway and near present day Eisenhower School, on land which was once part of the T. A. Gillespie Shell Loading Plant. Like all other construction efforts in that area, the builders had to be very careful when digging because of the possibility of unexploded ordnance from the 1918 explosion. My grandmother spent some time in Oak View before she passed away. My Mother confirmed that Nick’s father and uncle helped finish building the Morgan house I grew up in! Maybe someday I’ll meet Nick. We certainly couldn’t live that much further away from each other and still be in the 48 contiguous US states.Nick also confirmed for me that it was indeed his family that started Gabriel Tire (still in business) which used to sponsor one of the Morgan Little League teams.One thing which really stands out in this photo and was significant to the kids growing up in Morgan is “The Woods” seen next to Raritan Bay at the center top of the photo. It seemed SO big then!  

The second source of aerial photography for Morgan is one of the most amazing web sites I have ever encountered and certainly one of my all time favorites. Ever since I discovered it this past spring, I must end up visiting it at least every other week.HistoricAerials.com provides you aerial views of Middlesex County in the years 1931, 1940, 1947, 1957, 1963, 1970, 1972, 1979, 1987, 1995, 2002, and 2006. Within any of these years, you are able to zoom in & out and pan around to view any place you are interested in. The image shown here is an aerial image of the Raritan River Locomotive Round House in South Amboy in the year 1940. If you wanted to see what our previously featured Route 35 bridge over the New York & Long Branch Railroad and the now gone Route 35 bridge over Cheesequake Creek looked like in 1940, all you need to do is zoom out and pan towards the lower right (south east) of the screen.Historic Aerials also has many other interesting features. They have carefully aligned each of the images so that you can easily switch between years and stay looking at the same spot. It has the ability to superimpose street names on top of the images and has some really cool “Compare Tools” which let you easily move between the same exact spot during two different selected years. A cool thing to do is to look at Route 35 and the Route 35 Cheesequake Creek bridge in 1940 change to the new bridge and roadway in the 1947 view. There are also many “Surveying Tools” available which allow for things such as measuring distance.

Pennsylvania Railroad K4 "Pacific" Locomotive #3678. Double click on the image to enlarge it.

The last regularly scheduled steam train passed through Morgan in late 1957 (before my time). With the exception of the Blue Comet Nostalgia Train, which ran the rails from Raritan Bay to Bay Head in December 1975 and was covered on NBC’s Today Show with Tom Snyder, no steam locomotives have since traveled the tracks through Morgan (that I am aware of).

This photo is dated August 18, 1954 and shows a steam train heading north through Morgan on its way toward South Amboy. Seeing, hearing and feeling the steam locomotives passing through Morgan must have been quite an amazing thing. It went on for about 80 years. People living during most of those years probably couldn’t fathom the diesel or electric locomotives which came later.

Here are some interesting things to note about this photo:

• The photo is looking southeast toward Laurence Harbor.
• The train just passed under the Route 35 truss bridge featured in the just previous posting.
• The angle of the sun means this is a late afternoon / early evening train.
• The Engineer is readily visible in the train cab window.
• Just to the left in front of the locomotive, you can see the back of the Rob’t E Lee Inn and, just left of that, some of the long gone bungalows on Morgan Beach.
• The locomotive in the photo is #3678 which was a 4-6-2 “Pacific” K4 locomotive – one of a fleet of 425 owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR). It was built in 1918 at the Baldwin Juniata Locomotive Shop in Altoona, PA.
• Here is a link to a beautiful and clear black & white photo of PRR K4 locomotive #3678.
• The locomotive is longer than any of the individual track segments it is riding on (83 ½ feet vs. 78 feet).
• The combined weight of the locomotive and coal tender jointly weigh nearly half a million pounds, approximately half the weight of a Boeing 747.
• Only two of the 425 locomotives built remain in existence today. Number 3750 is in Strasburg, PA on static display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania (along with the John Bull replica mentioned in the second blog of this web site).  After its retirement in May 1956 and subsequent restoration, number 1361 was placed on static display for nearly 30 years at the famous Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, PA. For a while, 1361 was subsequently being restored at Steamtown in Scranton, PA. There are reports that 1361 is in pieces and is to be moved to the newly opened Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona, PA. It is hard to tell the true status of the project. Hopefully it will soon culminate with a restored and working K4 steam locomotive.
• More information on the PRR K4s can be found here.

Below are some YouTube video links showing K4s in action. In viewing them, you should be able to get a feel for the sounds of a K4 train steaming through Morgan, NJ:

• PRR K4 #1361 – First Excursion
• PRR K4 #1361 – Shakedown Run
• The Life and Times of the PRR K4s Pacifics

Below are some YouTube video links showing two of the seven segments of NBC’s Today Show with Tom Snyder featuring the Blue Comet Nostalgia Train. These were originally broadcast on December 25, 1975:

• Part 5 of 7
• Part 6 of 7

1928 - Route 35 Bridge over the NY&LB RR Tracks. Photo Courtesy of Mitchell Dakelmann.

An enormous THANK YOU to Mitchell Dakelmann for providing the above amazing 1928 photo of the Route 35 bridge crossing over the New York & Long Branch (NY&LB) Railroad in Morgan.  Mitchell is a member of the 71-year young North Jersey Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.

For those of us who grew up right near this location, there are a million things of interest in this photo.  They say a photo is worth a thousand words, well, let’s give it a try:

• This photo was taken on February 3, 1928, during the “Roaring 20’s”, before the economic disaster known as the Great Depression started as the result of the October 29, 1929 stock market crash the following year.
• This photo is looking south toward Laurence Harbor.
• According to the NJ DOT web site, this bridge was built in 1924.
• The photo is believed to have been taken by Union Switch and Signal, Inc. (US&S) of Swissvale, Pennsylvania and was probably showcasing their multi-light signal assembly and the railroad switch all in one photo.  Incidentally, US&S was founded by George Westinghouse in 1881.
• Union Switch and Signal later received a contract from the US Government during the early stages of World War II to manufacture 200,000 pistols.
• This photo was taken 9 ½ years after the T. A. Gillespie Shell Loading Plant explosions occurred a mile and a half to the west.
• The bridge design type is known as a Pratt Truss.
• Prior to 1927, this road was designated as Route 4.  In 1927, it was renumbered to New Jersey State Route 35.
• This bridge is still in place and is currently for the two northbound lanes of Route 35.  At the time of this photo, it was both the northbound and southbound lanes of Route 35.
• Note that the railroad tracks bear left toward the 1912 bascule bridge which replaced the 1870’s swing bridge (see posting from September 28, 2009) over Cheesequake Creek.
• Notice the glass insulators on the pole on the right (west) side of the photograph.  These glass insulators were a light green color and are now Collectors items.  The poles have long since been removed.  I don’t know whether the wires on the poles are telephone, telegraph or electrical.
• Notice the staircase coming down from the southbound land of Route 35 to the Morgan Station shelter.  Neither the staircase nor the shelter is still there.  This staircase would have been torn down and land fill put in its place when Route 35 was widened in the early 1940’s.
• In 1945, a parallel bridge (New Jersey Bridge # / NJDOT Structure #: 1222152) was built to accommodate the south bound lanes of Route 35 thus making this bridge northbound only.  The Morgan Station shelter was removed when the southbound bridge was built.
• On or near this site, this bridge replaced a trestle and bridge of the Jersey Central Traction Company trolley line which ran through Morgan from 1905 to 1923.
• Notice the accumulation of four years of steam locomotive soot in the middle of the bridge.
• This bridge would have connected, via an inclined road, to an earlier bridge over Cheesequake Creek (i.e., to the left of this photo going east toward Laurence Harbor). This earlier Cheesequake Creek bridge was torn down after the current Route 35 draw bridge was finished in 1942 (see earlier posts on this topic).
• The track in the foreground on the right (southbound track) has a switch which is no longer there.  In fact, the entire third set of tracks are no longer there.  It is believed by my good friend Ken (birthday today – October 9) that this set of tracks was the interchange siding from the long defunct Raritan River Rail Road (RRRR).  This siding was where the RRRR would park train cars to be transferred to the NY&LB RR.  The RRRR was one of three railroads which ran through Sayreville & South Amboy (Camden & Amboy, New York & Long Branch and Raritan River Rail Road).
• You can still see remains of the RRRR tracks further north, just north of the end of paved portion of Cliff Avenue, where the southbound track switches off to a side railing.  The remains are near this switch.
• Cady’s, a seafood restaurant, was located just to the left of this bridge, next to the Cheesequake Creek jetty.  Cady’s would later be renamed the Robert E Lee Inn.
• Notice the tracks are composed of rail segments bolted together vs. the continuously welded rails installed in the early 1980s.
• Just to the left of the bascule railroad drawbridge is the future site of Henry Luhrs Sea Skiff Company and later Zuback’s Heavy Metal Marine, Inc.
• Prior to the opening of this bridge, Old Spye Road was the main road for city slickers heading to the Jersey Shore.  Old Spye Road used to cross these railroad tracks between the Cheesequake Creek railroad bridge and the Morgan Station shelter.  This railroad crossing was a legendary site for summer traffic jams.
• The NJ DOT web site indicates the following about this bridge:
  The skewed Pratt thru-truss bridge on concrete abutments has bolted repairs at several verticals near the bottom gusset plates. The vertical and diagonal members are riveted built-up H-sections, while the chords re box sections. The struts at the top chord are latticed between angle sections. The new deck has aluminum Jersey-type barriers at both curb lines. The span is a technologically undistinguished example of what by 1924 was a common type used by the CNJ [Central New Jersey Railroad].
• A good number of photographers have taken photos of trains looking north (toward South Amboy) from the vantage point of this bridge.  The fantastic book “The Unique New York & Long Branch” has a few very nice photos from this vantage point.  Too bad I never thought to do that!  Maybe the next time I’m out that way.  In the mean time, if you have a good photo from this bridge, please send it my way.
• Today this bridge contains a tall wall on the pedestrian walkway on the track side which might make it no longer possible to take train photos.  I don’t know why the wall was put there.  Perhaps to stop people from jumping off or throwing things.  Perhaps it, and the continuous guardrail, was erected in response to a pretty horrible and probably fatal auto accident which occurred some time in the middle of the night in the 1970s which woke up the neighborhood.  A northbound car didn’t make the slight left curve and ran into the north side diagonal truss.

This photo made me realize how a photo which is may be mildly interesting to one person can be of overwhelming significance and interest to someone else.  I am so appreciative of Mitchell Dakelmann for this gift and welcome similar types of content contributions from other Morgan-NJ.org viewers.

Did I hit a thousand words?

• Bridge Type:  Pratt Thru-Truss
• Number of Lanes:  Two northbound
• Leaf Contains: Two lanes of traffic and one sidewalk.
• Total Length:  155 feet
• Deck Width:     30 feet
• Number of Spans:  1
• Length of Longest Span: 155 feet
• New Jersey Bridge # / NJDOT Structure #:  1222151
• Construction Completed:  1924
• Designer/Patent: CNJ RR Office of Engineering
• Sponsor/Owner:  New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT)
• Milepost:  47.52
• Material:  Steel and concrete

Mass Grave from Morgan Plant Explosion.

It was in 1918, at 7:40pm 91 years ago on this day October 4, when the first of a series of explosions spanning two days went off in building 6-1-1 of the T. A. Gillespie Shell Loading Plant in rural Morgan, NJ. Building 6-1-1, located within the area of land bordered by present day Dusko Drive, Rota Drive and Gillen Drive¹, contained equipment which melted and poured Amatol, a Trinitrotoluol (TNT) based explosive, into 155mm artillery shells (155mm = 6.1 inches) for shipment to France for use in the “Great War” (which later became known as “World War I”).

The remains of those unfortunate souls, who were so badly disintegrated by the blasts, were buried in a mass grave in nearby Ernst Memorial Cemetery. The task of trying to identify the unidentifiable and to witness & certify each burial fell to South Amboy resident Michael Nagel, who later became the Commander of American Legion Luke A. Lovely Post 62, after each partial body part was photographed per government mandate.

Inscription on the Morgan Memorial.

In 1929, eleven years after the blast, the South Amboy Lions Club erected the monument shown in the above 2009 photograph at the site of the 20’ x 35’ grave. The inscription reads: “In memory of the unidentified dead who gave their lives while in the service of the United States of America, at the Morgan Shell Loading Plant in the explosion of October 4 – 5, 1918.”

The grave and memorial are near the entrance of the Ernst Memorial Cemetery which is at the following location:

328 Ernston Road
Parlin, NJ 08859
40° 27′ 25″N, 74° 18′ 15″W (per Google Maps)

¹-Building location as identified by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Morgan Hose & Chemical Co. No 1 Fire Truck.

The Morgan, NJ community has been fortunate for the services provided by its volunteer fire department, The Morgan Hose & Chemical Company, since the company’s founding in 1928. I recall being a kid and hearing the air raid siren going off to call all the volunteers to the fire house which was located on historic Old Spye Road just south of Route 35 – next to Joe’s Kozy Bar & Club Bene. Each volunteer fire fighter (in those days called “Firemen”) would also have some electronic gizmo in their house called a Plectron to alert them to go to the fire house – as if the blaring air raid sirens weren’t enough! Often as the adult men were running or driving across Route 35 to get onto the fire truck, many of us kids would run to Kaiser’s parking lot at the intersection of Tyler Street and Route 35 to watch the fire truck(s) go screaming by.

If you see the Morgan Hose & Chemical Company fire trucks today, you will notice something very unique (after all, Morgan, NJ is unique) and yet very Morgan. On the side doors of both fire trucks is an image of the pirate Captain Morgan. The idea for this must have occurred within the last few years as the fire trucks through the early 80’s didn’t have these images on their doors. As readers of this web site know, Captain Morgan IS buried in the Morgan Family Cemetery. However the Captain Morgan buried in Morgan is the Revolutionary War soldier Captain James Morgan (died 1784), not the legendary privateer (not a pirate) Sir Henry Morgan who died in 1688, is buried in Jamaica, and is believed to be distantly related to our Captain James Morgan.

Captain Morgan on the Fire Truck Door.

Sorry about having to be Mr. Cold Shower regarding this Morgan Myth.

In light of the reverence we rightfully hold for firefighters in our post-9/11 World Trade Center world, I would like to pay tribute to the two volunteer firemen I recall who were on my side of Route 35, Mr. Buddy Brown and Mr. Carl Dufford. Thank you to both of these gentlemen for their dedicated and unselfish service in helping keep us safe. I know Mr. Dufford is no longer with us. You haven’t been forgotten these 40 years later.