![\"Henderson\u2019s](\"http:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/contentdir\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Morgan-Esso-Station.jpg\")
<\/a>Henderson\u2019s Esso Station, Morgan, NJ, Circa 1932. Photo Courtesy of Caroline Christensen.<\/p><\/div>\n
A few months ago Caroline Christensen, a school mate from high school, posted an image which she had kept as a remembrance of her late father, of \u201cHenderson\u2019s Esso Station\u201d on the Facebook group, \u201cThings That Aren\u2019t There Anymore\u201d.\u00a0 Caroline indicated that \u201cHenderson, Morgan, NJ\u201d was hand written on the back of the photo.\u00a0 A number of Morganites tried to place the location of where this building would have been situated but there was no definitive answer.\u00a0 Caroline was gracious enough to allow for me to scan the photo and post it on this web site \u2013 thanks, Caroline!<\/span><\/p>\n As you can see, it is a very old photo though within the image the gas station looks pretty new.\u00a0 It is possible that this photo was taken around the time when the gas station first opened \u2013 whatever year that was! One of the great things about this web site is hearing from people who either currently live in Morgan or lived in Morgan at one time.\u00a0 One of these readers is a lady named Mildred who used to live in the house located on the north side of Route 35 at the intersection of Tyler Street.\u00a0 For at least the last 20 years, and probably longer, this building has been occupied by Archie\u2019s Boat Tops.\u00a0 Mildred lived in Morgan in the years prior to and during the first year of World War II.<\/p>\n Left to Right: William H. Henderson, Edward Pitt, and Raymond P. Henderson.<\/p><\/div>\n Mildred identified two of the three men in the photograph.\u00a0\u00a0 According to Mildred, \u201c<\/span>Don’t know who first man is.\u00a0 Middle man is Edward Pitt and he married Helen Baker of Laurence Harbor.\u00a0 Beside him is his father I am pretty sure.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Like the location of General Morgan\u2019s house in the mid-1800\u2019s, here is my thought process (as well as some observations) regarding where I think this gas station would have been located, if this really was a gas station once located in Morgan:<\/p>\n Thanks to Ted Henderson for providing an update which helped to resolve many of the questions about this photo (and for proving me to be correct about my deductions about its location)!\u00a0 According to Ted, the image is likely from circa 1932, two of the three people in the photo are\u00a0his father William H. Henderson and Uncle Raymond P. Henderson (see \u201cThe Lore of the Chicken Farmer<\/a>\u201d), and the station was located on Route 35 South.\u00a0 A BIG thank you to Ted!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1940 Aerial image of Henderson\u2019s Esso Station (center of the image) surrounded by Route 35 above it (to the north), Old Spye Road on right side (on the east side) and the Route 35\/Old Spye Road transition road on the left and bottom side (to the south).<\/p><\/div>\n When you look at this 1940 aerial photo from HistoricAerials.com, you will indeed see Henderson\u2019s Esso located in the island where Route 35 meets Old Spye Road.<\/p>\n Route 35 underwent many changes between Cheesequake Creek and the Raritan River between the latter part of the 1930s up through World War II.\u00a0 Route 35 was rerouted off of present day South Pine Avenue onto a brand new 4 lane section to the west.\u00a0 The new portion intersected with Route 9 in what, nearly 80 years later, remains a horrible intersection for two major roads \u2013 especially in the winter.\u00a0 Going north from there, the two roads share lanes for about a mile and a half until Route 35 breaks off to flow onto its previous path to the Victory Bridge (original bridge opened in 1926, replacement bridges opened in 2004 and 2005) and Route 9 flows onto the Edison Bridge (opened October 1940).<\/p>\n Up until 1940, between Cheesequake Creek and South Pine Avenue, Route 35 had one lane going north and one lane going south.\u00a0 Between the time of this 1940 photo and HistoricAerial.com\u2019s 1947 aerial photo, the current Morgan Bridge<\/a> was built (opened 1943) and Route 35 was widened to two lanes in each direction between Cheesequake Creek and South Pine Avenue.\u00a0 In support of this, the present day two lane bridge on Route 35 south over the railroad tracks (NJ DOT Structure\u00a0 #1222152<\/a>) was opened in 1945.\u00a0 Widening of Route 35 from two lanes to four, with two lanes in each direction, would have been in the plan from the time it was split off from South Pine Avenue.<\/p>\n Hence, the widening of Route 35 marked the end of Henderson\u2019s Esso and Haussling Place on the south side of Route 35 as witnessed by their absence in the 1947 HistoricAerial.com photograph.<\/p>\n Originally posted July 21, 2013.\u00a0 Updated January 4, 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Morgan Memories \u2013 Henderson\u2019s Esso Station A few months ago Caroline Christensen, a school mate from high school, posted an image which she had kept as a remembrance of her late father, of \u201cHenderson\u2019s Esso Station\u201d on the Facebook group, \u201cThings That Aren\u2019t There Anymore\u201d.\u00a0 Caroline indicated that \u201cHenderson, Morgan, NJ\u201d was hand written on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":979,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"page-templates\/full-width.php","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-427","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1457,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/427\/revisions\/1457"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>\n
January 2017 Update!<\/h3>\n
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