This cache is in Ft Lee historic park. Ft Lee was, along with Ft Washington on the NY side of the Hudson, meant to protect the Hudson River valley from the British fleet.   August and Sept  of 1776 Washington's army fled NYC ahead of the advancing British. After the Battle of White Plains ended at a standstill, Washington continued his retreat into NJ and the supposed safety of Ft Lee. High atop of the Palisades it was believed that the fort could not be successfully assaulted via the river.  

Despite this, local Tories advised the British of a route up the cliffs and Washington found his troops facing a British attack in late November. They beat a hasty retreat, leaving equipment behind and food still cooking on campfires. 

1776 New Jersey  Part 3 The Evacuation of Fort Lee

After retreating from Ft Lee, with the British in hot pursuit, it was imperative that Washington's army  beat the British to this bridge and put the Hackensack River between his army and his pursuers.

Of course the bridge is not the same. 

1776 New Jersey part 4 Bridge that saved a nation

Grace Lord park is loaded with history. This cache will take you past the remains of a RR turntable from the 1800's.

Amazing Grace Reprise

This cache is located near the adit of Hope Mine which was opened in the 1760's by ironmaster, Peter Hasenclever, Hope Mine was one of the earliest and largest iron mines in northern NJ. The mine supplied iron ore for the Revolutionary War effort and well into the 1800's.

Beyond Hope

When Alexander Hamilton saw the Great Falls he envisioned America's first great industrial city, which thanks to Hamilton and other investors it soon became.

Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution

Location of the landing area of the first balloon launched in North America on January 9, 1793.

Blanchard's Descent

With the opening of Morris Canal in 1831 near Booneton Falls, the site became an ideal one for industry. The falls to provide energy and the canal for accessible shipping. With this in mind the New Jersey Iron Company was formed to build an ironworks between the falls and canal. With the ironworks, the town of Booneton Falls sprung up around it to house workers and was soon a thriving town. The ironworks remained in operation until 1873 when the depression in that year caused it to shut its doors.

Some time after the depression the ironworks were re-opened, but business was never very good and the ironworks eventually closed for good around the turn of the 20th century.

This cache is hidden among the ruins of the old ironworks.

Booneton Iron Works

Grace Lord Park is filled with historic remains of Boonton's past. These falls powered the early industry located at this site.

Boonetown Falls V2.0

Foxcroft, (AKA Van Slyke Castle) was built in the early 1900's by William Porter who had dreams of creating a fish and game preserve on the land surrounding Ramapo Lake (Then known as Le Grande Lake).  He died in an automobile accident before his dream could be realized and his widow, Ruth Coles lived in Foxcroft.  She remarried Warren C Van Slyke who was assistant Chief of Naval Intelligence and an attorney who argued claims resulting from the sinking of the Lusitania.  It was used by them as  a summer home until Van Slyke passed away, afterwhich Ruth moved to Foxcroft and lived there until her death in 1940. It was burned by vandals in the late 1950's and only the walls remain today. 

Castle Point

This site was first developed in 1886 by the American Manufacturing and Supply Company who built a gunpowder mill here. The site went through several hands until being purchased by DuPont in 1902 who opened  Dupont  Powder Works here, eventually employing over 7,500 workers .  They expanded the site and manufactured gunpowder  for WW1. 
Operations were ceased by 1926 and the area essentially abandoned, though still owned by Dupont for many years.  The section on the north side of the river was sold to the state of NJ in the 1990s. Wanaque's Back Beach Park also occupies former DuPont land on the south side of the river.

The entire area is littered with old foundations and other structures that remain from powder works. 

DuPont Ruins – revisited 

In the 1890's Thomas Edison built a huge iron mining and processing plant in this area, using a new process that he patented to extract iron from the even the lowest quality ore.  

Unfortunately about that time huge deposits of easily accessible, high quality iron were discovered in the midwest and Edison lost a huge sum of money before he ceased operations here. 

Though taken back by nature, the area around this cache is filled with the vestiges of it's heyday, including numerous mines and foundations. 

Edisons Dark Rock Cache

Constructed in the early 1700's, the Westervelt-Ackerson house, also known as The Old Stone House is Ramsey’s oldest building.

Originally built as a farmhouse, it became a stagecoach stop and a tavern. Aaron Burr is said to have stayed here. 


 

GeOld Stone House of Ramsey

Dey Mansion. George Washington stayed here

Good Dey Sir

The legendary location of where Alexander Hamilton fell during his duel with Aaron Burr. 

Hamilton Rock

In 1766,Peter Hasenclever came from Germany and backed by British investors, founded the ironworks at Long Pond. He built his home near what is now, Ringwood Manor and constructed a 6 mile long road through the Ramapo hills to connect that area with the Long Pond site. Historians from the Friends of Long Pond Ironworks used some old maps and old-fashioned detective work to re-discover the colonial era road. Most of the first leg of this cache follows the old road. Searchers will also pass through the original location of the village of the colonial era ironworks. 

Hasenclever Iron 

This is at the location of the Brown Mine, an iron mine from the 1800's. The remains of the mine are evident through the huge slag piles around the area. 

Haskell Depths aka The Brown Mine

Though it is unlikely that the stone steps were built by the Continental Army as legend has it, the summit near where this cache is hidden was indeed the location of a Revolutionary War era signal beacon used to alert the army and the militia to British troop movements.

Limpidity-4: George Washington's StairMaster

The Long Pond Ironworks were built in 1766 by German ironmaster, Peter Haasenclever and operated until 1882, making iron for a wide range of purposes, including manufacturing ammunition for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and the US army during the Civil War.  If you approach this cache from Greenwood Lake Turnpike you will pass the remains of both the colonial and Civil War era furnaces, as well as support buildings from the later operation.

Long Pond Ironworks

Built in the 1830's, the Morris Canal stretched across northern NJ with terminals at the Delaware River and Newark.  The canal used a unique series of inclined planes to negotiate elevation changes.  Using cables and a wooden boat trolly, canal boats were hauled to the top (or bottom) of the plane and deposited in in the basin at the end. A unique system of water driven turbines powered the massive cables that hauled the canal boats.

This is Plane 9 East, one of  the 23 inclined planes that were built for this purpose.  The planes were numbered consecutively starting at Lake Hopatcong The house at the end of  Emery Lane is the original canal tender's home.  It is now a private residence.  

Enough of the plane remains to get a picture of what it looked like in it's heyday and there are two interpretative signs that explain how the plane worked.    

At the cache site you are standing near the top of the plane.  

Morris Canal Plane 9 East

The cache is near the entrance of  Blue Mine, which was first opened in 1765 by German ironmaster Peter Haasenclever and was worked on and off until the early 1900's. Some of the concrete remains from the mining operation remain in the area. 


Never You Mine

This is a list of caches located at historic locations in NJ. In most cases I'm looking for caches that mention the relevance of the location on the cache page, or in the title, but if the location is significant enough I will list the cache whether or not the cache page mentions the location.  The list is not complete, so if you are aware of  any I missed please be sure to e-mail me. 

Historic Caches in NJ.list-details-1wr9x6v{text-transform:uppercase;font-size:12px;}@media screen and (min-width: 600px){.list-details-1wr9x6v{font-size:1.25rem;}}.list-details-1wr9x6v.shareable{color:#87705a;}.list-details-1wr9x6v.public{color:#00b265;}Public

Historic Caches in NJPublic