New Jersey - Day 22 - Paterson

Clarksboro KOA
Saturday, 22 December 2018

today's

route

The map on the right starts where the one on the left leaves off in the north.  My goal was Paterson, which isn't far from the northern border of the state.  It was just over 2 hours of toll road driving.

Paterson is home to Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park, which I'd never heard of but apparently should have.  I was stymied by this idiotic federal government partial shutdown, which includes visitor centers at national parks.  I am thus almost totally dependent on the park's website for information, which I copied here.

• Paterson Great Falls, America's first planned industrial city, offers historic mills and tours as well as stories of Alexander Hamilton.
• Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park is site to one of the nation's largest waterfalls. The Great Falls of the Passaic River and the surrounding historic buildings and raceways are the foundation for stories of Alexander Hamilton, the Industrial Revolution, the labor movement and the important contributions of immigrants to the making of America. 
• Hamilton envisioned Paterson, with its water power provided by the Great Falls of the Passaic River, as America's counterpart and response to the industrial revolution occurring in England during the same period.
• Immigrants still settle today in Paterson to pursue their versions of Hamilton's vision, creating a diverse and vibrant culture. 
• The history of the City of Paterson includes its beginnings as the ambitious project of Hamilton and the Society for Establishing Useful Manufacturers (S.U.M.) in 1792 at the Great Falls, the early development of water power systems for industrial use, and the various types of manufacturing that occurred in the District's mills into the 20th Century. 
• These included cotton fabrics, railroad locomotives, textile machinery, jute, and silk spinning, weaving, and dyeing, among many others.

So here are my own photos of what I saw.

Paterson Great Falls

another view - in the foreground is the S.U.M. building

Passaic River just above the falls

In the Passaic River photo, the falls start where your view of the water ends, just under the bridge.  The S.U.M. building in the wide view is explained in the park's information above.

Hamilton is facing the falls

the park's info about Hamilton from the local viewpoint

Near Paterson is Lambert Castle, which apparently is more of a silk manufacturer's version of what he'd known in Europe than a real castle.  It's open to the public but I wasn't interested enough to take the time and pay the fee.  Near it, though, there's a tower that Gen. Washington's men used as a lookout during the Revolutionary War and, if I'd had more time, I'd have gone looking for it.  That's the drawback of the campground being so far away.

The park was literally right around the corner from Libby's Lunch, my other destination.   As far as I've been able to tell, New Jersey doesn't exactly have a particular culinary speciality.  But many businesses are proud to advertise an item called Hot Texas Wieners (though some spell it Weiners).  And there's a variation on it called Ripper Dogs.  They can be found all over the state - I passed a business in Salem down on the Delaware River southwest of here that advertised them (the Hot Texas Weiners) - but the claim for point of origin comes from Paterson at Libby's Lunch.

Libby's Lunch, since 1935

my Hot Texas Weiner

The inside looks like a diner, and I'm betting that place is the original 1935 home of the business.  Nice people.  And that Hot Texas Weiner is, as you can see, nothing more than a chili dog with onions - that's what they gave me for "the works."  That's it.  That's New Jersey's claim to culinary fame.

Ripper dogs are hot dogs that are cooked in deep fat until the casings "rip" open, and then they're served on a bun with pickle relish.  Really.

Well, what I can say is that my chili dog was good and cost only $3.35.  But I'm not going in search of a deep-fat-fried hot dog, not even for the experience.

There was a very strong wind all day today, with gusts that blew me around on the highways and kept me in the far right lane going no more than 60 mph.  Walking the dogs in the falls area and along the Passaic River (out of sight on the far left of the Libby's Lunch photo), was certainly brisk and not particularly pleasant for me, but the dogs deserved it after the long drive.

Even though we left the campground soon after 8:00, it was 1:00 when we'd finished lunch.  I figured I needed to start back, since a 2 hour drive would put me back at the campground not long before dusk, when driving gets tricky for me.  So between the short daylight and the distance of the campground, my sightseeing is definitely curtailed this time of year.

And now with this govt. shutdown, I'm even more restricted.  Not far from Paterson is the Pres. Grover Cleveland Birthplace, run by the National Park Service.  He's the only president born in New Jersey and I know nothing about him and would really like to visit this place.  But even if I had time to see it today, why bother going over there, or making a separate 2-hour trip, just to see the outside with little chance of learning anything.  Very disappointing.  I guess I can hope the shutdown will end before the month does, but it's not something I can expect.  Disappointing and irritating.

On the Garden State Parkway, I passed a building that looked like the headquarters for Nylabone.  But I see on their website they're located over near Asbury Park (take note, Springsteen fans), so I don't know what the building I saw was for.  It said Nylabone in really big letters, though.

On the drive up on the New Jersey Turnpike (I spent more than $30 in tolls on this trip, just trying to shorten the driving time), at one point I was passed by at least 20 cars, all with Maryland license plates.  It was weird, especially because I was seeing plates from all around NJ but almost none actually from NJ.  But when I switched to the Garden State, getting closer to the population centers I saw almost exclusively NJ plates.  Wonder where they'd been.

You may remember on the drive south my first day here I mentioned passing some huge cemeteries.  Well, today I got caught in a traffic problem that brought us all to a standstill right in that area, so I got proof.

That was only one of them - there were others, and on both sides of the road.  Just huge.  But I guess people have been dying in New Jersey for a long time, but it doesn't have enough land to just start a new cemetery, like we seem to do in Texas.  Or like the very small cemeteries I ran across in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

I passed a regular highway sign saying, "Speed Limit 55 mph," and then it added "Conditions Permitting."  That made me wonder if people tried to argue their way out of trouble caused by going too fast on icy roads, by claiming they were only going the speed limit.

Both going and coming I saw exit signs for "The Oranges" which surprised me, for some reason.  New Jersey is home to Orange, West Orange, East Orange, South Orange, and I thought I saw an exit for North Orange, though I can't find it on the map.  Why bother writing all that on a sign when you can lump them all together.

New Jersey is the only US state where county officials are called Freeholders.  Each county has a Board of Chosen Freeholders.  I've seen these signs around here and there, and saw one again today at the falls where a sign told me the Passaic County Board of Chosen Freeholders was responsible for maintenance of "the open space" which, presumably was the pleasant area around the parking lot at the falls.

I heard on NPR that I'd missed something in Connecticut I'd have liked to see: Melissa and Doug Toy Company.  It's in Wilton, down near Bridgeport, which is a part of the state I didn't get to until I left it.  I'm betting this company would have ranked up there with the teddy bear company I visited in Vermont for smiles. 

In one way this time of year is good for me: the campgrounds always have room for me, and the number of campers who have dogs is limited.  This makes it easy to walk my dogs without worrying about encountering trouble around every corner.  But the hard part is that so few campgrounds are open that my ability to travel to see things is much more limited.  That's what happened to me in Connecticut, and it's happening again in New Jersey.  RI being so small it wasn't a problem, and I'm hoping it'll work out like that in Delaware, too.  But I'll be in Maryland in February, and though it's a small state, it's spread out and may give me the same problems I'm getting here.  Well, we'll see.