THE NAVESINK WATERSHED
A SHORT HISTORY
As Interpreted in 2003 by Kate Keelen and Jerry Keelen
Navesink Swimming River Group A Subwatershed Regional Council of the Monmouth Coastal Watersheds Partnership
ILLUSTRATION #1: Tinton Falls with dam as it appeared approximately 1905
The Navesink Watershed A Short History
Introduction
Water moving through and over the 95 square miles of varied terrain that comprise the Navesink watershed has shaped the land and history of northeastern Monmouth County. Highlands and bogs are melded together by down-cutting streams, lazy sloughs and strong tidal rivers that twice each day flow backwards into the land. Water imbues the land with great beauty, but also with resources that have attracted people from pre-history through
European colonial times and to the present. That history includes the inhumanity of slavery and one slave’s astonishing revenge, vicious
Revolutionary War rivalries and deadly battles between loyalists and patriots, a remarkable mineral spring beloved to the Indians and profitable to generations of owners, the State’s earliest iron works, a French-style communal utopia visited by the leading intellectuals of the 19th Century, and creation of a massive reservoir decried a century ago by Red Bank’s town fathers as an underhanded “water scheme”. All of that history winds itself around the waterways of the Navesink watershed.
What is a Watershed?
A watershed is the land area drained by a set of brooks, streams, and rivers that generally flow in a common direction and terminate at a common
Page 1 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History destination, usually a large river, lake or the ocean. The bigger waterways of the Navesink watershed are the Hockhockson and Pine Brook Rivers loosely in or bordering Tinton Falls in the south, and the Big Brook, Mine
Brook, Yellow Brook (it really is yellow), Ramanessin Brook, Willow
ILLUSTRATION #2: The Navesink Watershed highlighted in purple
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Brook and Hop Brook drain the hills of Holmdel, Colts Neck and
Middletown to the west and north. These latter rivers meet to form the
Swimming River Reservoir in Colts Neck which ultimately spills over into the Swimming River and on to the Navesink in Red Bank. Further to the north the Nut Swamp and Jumping Brooks feed the man-made Shadow Lake which along with Poricy Brook empties into the head of the Navesink near the North Jersey Coast Line train trestle. Other streams, most notably
McClees Creek in Middletown’s Navesink Hills, flow into the sides of the
Navesink from Middletown, Fair Haven and Rumson.
The Remarkable Tinton Falls
ILLUSTRATION #3: Tinton Falls 2003
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The unlikely but fortuitous placement of a thirty-foot waterfall at the extreme head of high tide on a coastal plain was quickly noticed by the earliest European settlers. Once the British chased away the Dutch around
1664, English colonists from New York secured charters from the mignons of the land’s new sovereign, King Charles II, authorizing them to “buy” vast areas from the local Indians. At that time, there were only two towns,
Middletown and Shrewsbury, in the Navesink watershed. Both still exist but are now much smaller than their original configurations that amounted to one-quarter of the province of New Jersey.
Hundreds and possibly thousands of years before the first European explorers discovered Monmouth County, the Lenni Lenape (meaning
“original of our people”) branch of the Algonquin Indians made it their home. More specifically, their local communities were called Navesink
(inhabited coastal areas) and Toponomese (inland inhabitants), both a part of the Matovancan community, which was the sub-clan of the Unami. The
Toponomese and Navesink of Monmouth County were generally a mobile people and their numbers dwindled throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
At first, it is reported, the colonists rarely ventured far from their small villages for fear of the Lenape and wild animals. The colonists did appreciate the Indians’ skill and willingness to bounty hunt local wolves and
Page 4 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History panthers that were common in the watershed well into the 1700’s. One historian claims that the Indians never relinquished their ownership of an ancient beloved mineral spring that flows from the hard limonite rock a few hundred feet northwest of the Tinton Falls.
In 1674, about nine years after actually occupying the falls area,
James Grover, one of 12 men granted land by New York’s Governor
Nicholls in the Monmouth Patent, legally purchased the falls and all of the land around the Pine Brook from the “bogee meadow called by the Indains
Hockoceung” (Hockhockson swamp now in Earle Naval Depot) eastward
“so ranging along the falls river until it fall into the Navesink River”. The
Deed was signed by Matappens and Taptawappamund, sachems of the
Toponemese, and given to James Grover, Richard Hartshorne and John
Bowne. It is recorded in Book 1 of the Secretary of State Deed books and thus is one of the first recorded land transfers in the New Jersey colony.
James Grover probably was first attracted to the waterfall for general milling purposes, but quickly discovered the river-bed and flood plain were rich in bog iron ore. The power of water was well understood by the colonists. Mills were already operating in North Jersey, New England and even on the Pine Brook. Around 1674, Grover enlisted New England iron master and craftsman Henry Leonard and his sons to construct the first iron
Page 5 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History works in New Jersey at the falls. Key to the iron works were water wheel powered bellows and forge machinery. Iron rich limonite ore was dug from the flood plain and slopes of the Pine Brook near the falls. An abundance of local fuel in the form of vast white, yellow and pitch pine and oak forests completed the inventory of natural ingredients most essential for the new iron business.
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ILLUSTRATION #4: Limonite was a popular building stone. St.James’ Memorial Church, Eatontown, has limonite walls.
Bog iron deposits are plentiful in the riverbeds and flood plains of most of Monmouth County’s streams. The acidic ground water that sustains
Page 7 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History the Pine Brook leeches iron and other minerals from underlying soils and sedimentary glauconitic rock. The water borne iron oxidizes in the surface water and the heavy orange-brown iron oxide settles in the slow pools and bogs of the downstream river. Over the course of a few decades the iron deposits become rich enough to be mined.
ILLUSTRATION # 5: Iron-rich spring water oxidizes on contact with air to form thick orange deposits near the Tinton Falls.
Power from Grover’s water wheel pumped huge air-bellows and pounded soft iron ingots into desired shapes in a process called “forging”.
The iron works at the Tinton Falls was the first iron manufacturing facility in
New Jersey. The mill site included a cold blasting, charcoal furnace into
Page 8 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History which limonite iron ore, charcoal and limestone were dumped in alternate layers into the opening of the furnace stack. The charcoal burned white hot causing the iron to melt out of the ore and drop onto a hearth. Twice a day, the molten iron was run into a casting bed of sand and wooden molds. Then the liquid iron was cooled into bars or other desired shapes suitable for forging into saleable items. To make one ton of bar iron, two tons of iron ore, one to two tons of charcoal, and a few shovels full of limestone were needed. The average colonial furnace produced around 500 tons of iron a year.
As with any successful enterprise, the Pine Brook iron works soon caught the attention of a wealthy investor. Col. Lewis Morris, newly arrived in New York from lucrative service to the English King in Barbados, acquired a controlling interest from James Grover the iron works in 1675 along with thousands of acres of land. Col. Morris called his acquisition
“Tintern Manor” plantation after his ancestral home in England. At its height, Tintern Manor consisted of more than 6,000 acres. It is debated whether the name “Tinton Falls,” appearing on maps as early as 1695, is derived from “Tintern Manor” but there is an obvious similarity. Morris’ purchase and the disruptive nature of a fully operational iron works ended
Page 9 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History other nearby mill uses on the Pine Brook, at least for the next several generations.
ILLUSTRATION #6: 1676 map of Tintern Manor and surroundings. Includes Pine Brook, Yellow Brook and Hop Brook, now mainly Colts Neck. (Rutgers Library)
Col. Lewis Morris’ set up a working manor system that became a political and financial power base from which he and his heirs would rule the life and times of Monmouth County and beyond. Tintern Manor had its own petty court and was a legally recognized small manor of the European model.
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In 1670s, slavery and indenturing servants were legal practices and fairly common in the eastern parts of the New Jersey colony. Labor at
Tinton Manor and the mill was supplied by slaves and indentured
Europeans. The mill and iron works are considered significant in the history of North American slavery because slaves were used in a manufacturing process rather than for agricultural work, which was the norm even in
Monmouth County.
Morris had over 60 slaves and 20 indentured servants at the manor.
The male slaves performed the most arduous tasks, such as cutting and hauling logs to the furnace of the iron forge. Women and children slaves were assigned domestic work. European indentured servants generally performed the manufacturing processes and had at least certain minimal rights and expectation of freedom one day in the future. The white servants and slaves were housed in separate quarters.
Col. Lewis Morris’ death in 1691 left Tintern (or possibly by now Tinton) Manor in the hands of his nephew and heir, also named Lewis
Morris. The second Lewis Morris has been described as a petty tyrant by
Monmouth County historians. In one famous story, Lewis Morris was charged with “running races and playing nyne-pins on the Sabbath day.”
Being Magistrate, he dismissed the charges against himself and had his
Page 11 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History accusers punished. Perhaps hypocritically, he later wrote the Bishop of
London complaining about the rioting and drunkenness of the locals on the
Sabbath and the need for the moral influence of clergy in the area. The
Bishop obliged by sending a missionary cleric to Tintern Manor where the first services of what was to become Christ Church (Church of England) parish were held on Christmas Day 1702. The first Christ Church was erected on the corner of Sycamore and Main St. (now Rt. #35) in
Shrewsbury. The current Christ Church at the same location was built in
1769.
ILLUSTRATION #7: Christ Church, Shrewsbury, built in 1769. The congregation first met at Tintern Manor in 1702.
Pious or not, Lewis Morris was a very ambitious, persistent and skilled politician. He became an Assembly member, then Chief Justice of
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New York and New Jersey, and crowned his career as Governor of the New
Jersey colony from 1738 until his death in 1746.
Col. Lewis Morris’ grandson, yet another Lewis Morris, became a member of the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of
Independence as a representative of New York State.
Richer iron deposits than those in Tinton Falls were eventually found in the pine barrens of South Jersey and hills of Pennsylvania. By the mid-
1700’s the Tinton Falls mill was grinding grains, but there is some evidence that iron manufacturing may have emerged from time to time at the site up until the final written references to iron works around 1844.
On June 9, 1779, British raiders following the river system west from their safe haven on Sandy Hook, successfully surprised the colonists at the
Tinton Falls mill then owned by Col. Daniel Hendrickson.
Hendrickson was a prominent figure in the independence cause and provided flour and other mill products to the revolutionary fighters. He also secretly stored guns, gun powder, flour and grains for the American cause at the mill. Loyalists’ spies informed the British of Col. Hendrickson’s operation and he and his mill became prime targets for the British and their
Monmouth County loyalist supporters. Hendrickson and several others were taken prisoner and two patriots were killed in defending the attack. More
Page 13 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History details about this small but important battle can be read in the section on
Col. Tye that follows. There was bitter divisiveness in Monmouth County over the Revolutionary War and the property holdings of many prominent loyalists were confiscated during the war and afterwards.
The mill at Tinton Falls clearly has been a literal and cultural crossroads in American history that includes Indian life, early colonial settlement, the first iron manufacturing in the State, the despair of slavery and a Revolutionary battle at which the blood of American patriots was spilled. The wane of mill power put an end to the industrial uses of the falls by the early 20th Century. Suburbanization and modern ways have diminished the relevance of the falls. No longer a center of industry and town-life, the falls now flow on mainly as a hard to glimpse town namesake.
Nevertheless, the site has few rivals in the history of our country. It remains a scenic place, still the wooded “romantic dell” Barber and Howe wrote of in their 1845 “Historical Collection”.
For the past generation the mill site has been a favorite local dining spot. The Grist Mill restaurant, located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Sycamore and Tinton Avenues, is the current occupant. The contemporary structure at the site is of unknown age, but it is known that the
Page 14 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History mill burned several times, so the foundation is possibly the only remnant of centuries past.
ILLUSTRATION #8: Mill at the Tinton Falls (Gristmill Restaurant) 2003
The Indian Spring at Tinton Falls
A few hundred paces northwest from the Tinton Falls is the Tinton
Spring. This large natural spring has been flowing since before recorded history. Native American peoples for centuries thought the waters from the spring were medicinal and traveled to them from great distances. Barber and
Howe’s 1845 “Historical Collection” focus on the spring in their description of Tinton Falls: “Tinton Falls, 2 ½ miles southwest of Shrewsbury, is on a
Page 15 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History branch of the Navesink River, it contains about 25 dwellings, a furnace, a grist mill and saw mill. At the village is a chalybeate spring once held in high repute by the Indians who on selling out to the whites had reserved the spring and a small strip of surrounding land for the public benefit. The water is composed of iron, copper, sulphur. When taken from the spring it is clear but on standing a few hours it assumes the color of cider, and discolors glasses in which it is placed.”
ILLUSTRATION 9A: Close up view of the Tinton Falls Spring in 2003
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ILLUSTRATION #9B: The ancient Tinton Falls Spring as it appears in 2003behind two sets of fences.
The claim that the Indians so revered the springs that they refused to relinquish it to the first English purchasers is not bourn out in the original deed from the Lenape sachems, but it is plausible and makes a nice story.
Diaries of travelers in the area note daylong trips to taste the healthful waters and also the abiding interest of the local Indians in returning to the spring.
When Lewis Morris’ descendant Lewis Morris Ashfield sold the main part of Tinton Manor in 1765 he advertised the spring as a major attraction for potential hoteliers.
In fact, a hotel called the Mineral Springs Hotel was constructed on the southeast side of Sycamore and Tinton Avenues by Robert Morris in
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1838. Apparently, many people came to the spring during the summer months to enjoy the scenic location and imbibe “chalybeate” (ka-LIB-be –at)
(as iron laden springs were called at the time) waters. The popularity of such springs among colonists was probably imported from England where chalybeate water was discovered and celebrated (and is still celebrated) for its medicinal powers in Kent during the 17th century. The Mineral Springs
Hotel changed hands and names many times until the building was razed probably in the 1940’s. The hotel is also credited as being the first tavern in
Monmouth County, presumably serving alternative medicinal beverages.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a company called The Tinton Falls Mineral
Spring Company was incorporated in 1866. Dr. Z. W. Scriven and his fellow proprietors planned to issue $50,000 in stock and bottle the water from their eternal and healthful spring. Dr. Scriven may have been ahead of his time in the bottled water field, but business probably was not brisk because as noted by Barber and Howe, while clear when flowing, if the water sits for a few hours it turns an orange color from the oxidation of its heavy iron content. This is not surprising since this is the exact process that created the bog iron sediments and limonite deposits that previously went into Morris’ next door furnaces to produce iron. If one has patience,
Page 18 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History however, the iron sinks to the bottom and the water becomes clear and inviting.
Bill Barrett, a Tinton Falls historian, found the results of an 1882 analysis of a water sample sent to Washington D.C. for testing. The water was neutral, slightly turbid, and had many chemicals in it, including calcic magnesic carbonate, chlorides, silicate of alumina, iron, lime, magnesia, potassa, soda, sulphuric acid, along with small amounts of unidentified particles.
ILLUSTRATION #10A: Cheers! Chalybeate brew fresh from the Tinton Falls Spring.
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Is the water safe? Probably by the standards of past centuries it was, and many, including physicians, testified that it healed what ailed them. In modern times, however, well owners spend millions to remove similar iron and mineral cocktails from their water supply.
ILLUSTRATION 10B: Cheers again! This time after colloids are allowed to settle.
If the native Lenape did keep the ancient well spring for themselves in perpetuity they might be interested to know that it is still flowing as strong as ever. Located east of the limonite walled Tinton Avenue Bridge just beyond the northeast corner of the Tinton and Sycamore Avenues, is a
Page 20 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History fenced municipal pumping station. There is a second cyclone fence inside which contains the now mostly forgotten Tinton Spring of the Lenapes. It is circular, about a dozen feet in diameter, murky and rusty orange in color, but has a peculiar character and the appearance of depth. There are also many other small ground water springs in the area that are still producing rich orange-brown iron stains in the flood plain and slopes of the Pine Brook.
Col. Tye: A Shrewsbury Slave’s Revenge
Colonel Tye started life simply called Titus a slave to Jacob Corlies of
Shrewsbury. Corlies was a harsh man, disliked and eventually disowned by his Quaker brethren for fighting and shameful treatment of his slaves. Titus was strong willed and in 1775 escaped to British controlled New York where he wound up in the service of the King against the American cause.
He fought valiantly against the Revolution in Virginia, rising to the rank of non-commissioned Colonel leading at times up to 800 black and white soldiers. By 1778 Col. Tye had made his way back to New Jersey to fight in the Battle of Monmouth and soon thereafter to become the scourge of the
American militias in Monmouth County. He accomplished this end by leading his raiders on daring forays up the rivers and through the swamps of the Swimming River and the Navesink watershed. Col. Tye’s knowledge of
Page 21 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History the local rivers and swamps enabled him to travel unnoticed. This also gave him a tremendous element of surprise and a sure means of retreat which he
ILLUSTRATION 11: Col. Tye’s Pine Brook clandestine waterway into the heart of populated Monmouth County
used to his advantage on many occasions. He and his men would appear from the thickets, attack and then mysteriously disappear into the swamps and rivers only to later reappear with captives and prizes in tow at the British camp at Sandy Hook.
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Monmouth County was the most physically and psychologically ravaged New Jersey county during the War for Independence from Britain.
Many county residents called Tories remained loyal to the King and engaged in bitter and frequently deadly conflict with the county patriots who formed the Monmouth militia. Neighbors presided over the capture and execution of neighbors. English colonial and military officials readily accepted the services and financial backing of the Monmouth County Tories.
British Governor Dunsmore of the New York and Virginia colonies issued a declaration that slaves who ran away and assisted the English cause would be free. This decree and the examples of prominent runaway slaves such as Col. Tye, emboldened many thousands of slaves to self-emancipate themselves and in many cases throw in their lot with the British in the hope of gaining the ultimate prize of freedom. In response to Governor
Dunsmore’s success and the then weakening position of the American side,
New Jersey’s first governor, William Livingston, attempted to have the legislature outlaw slavery in 1778. Governor Livingston’s proposal was not adopted and New Jersey, which on many levels was probably the worst of the northern slave states, did not ban slavery until 1848.
It has been pointed out that Col. Tye particularly targeted slave holders in his stealthy attacks up the Swimming River and its tributaries. It
Page 23 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History is not clear whether he exacted personal revenge on Jacob Corlies, but he did attack slave owners that would have been well known to him from his youth in Monmouth County.
From 1778 through 1780, Tye and his men, dubbed the “motley crew,” burned and looted the houses and farms of leading civil and military officials before being driven back to their boats. He also captured many high ranking militia officers and participated in reprisal killings of militia, including Private Joseph Murray of Colts Neck who had killed area Tories.
As previously mentioned, one of his most famous attacks occurred at the historic mill at the falls on the Pine Brook where he and the notorious
Tory John Moody killed two and captured several key leaders of the
Monmouth Militia. An article in the New Jersey Gazette described the battle: “On June 9th, a party of about fifty refugees (ex-slaves and loyalists) landed in Monmouth and marched to Tinton Falls undiscovered, where they surprised and carried off Col. Daniel Hendrickson, Col. Wyckoff, Capt.
Chadwick, Captain McKnight and several privates of the militia, and also drove off sheep and horned cattle. About thirty of our militia hastily collected and made some resistance, but were repulsed with loss of two men killed and ten wounded. Loss of enemy unknown.”
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James Moody later wrote for a London publication that Lt. Auke
Hendrickson and Capt. Chadwick were shot dead when they charged Tye and his troops with muskets. The Loyalist “refugees” suffered ten wounded.
Col. Tye continued to raid and taunt the Monmouth Militia in a three year reign of terror. He lost his life to lock jaw resulting from a minor bullet wound to his wrist suffered in a raging battle with the county’s foremost patriot Capt. Joshua Huddy. In that action, Huddy surrendered at his Colt’s
Neck home on the condition that the Col. Tye’s raiders not burn it down.
Interestingly, Col. Tye’s forces lost the cattle they had taken as prizes during the battle with Huddy in the slopes and thickets of their retreat probably along the Yellow Brook. Joshua Huddy also knew the watershed and in the chaos of the retreat was able to escape his captors in Rumson Neck and flee.
Capt. Huddy’s history after that is heroic and engaging. He lost his life to an act of treachery by fellow Monmouth County native and loyalist Richard
Lippincott.
Col. Tye is an important but little known figure in the American
Revolution. Fighting on the winning side clearly would have garnered him much more acclaim over the ensuing years. Nevertheless, his actions are now being recognized and seriously studied. Titus, later Col. Tye, was vengeful, but he was also valiant. His actions have to be considered in the
Page 25 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History light of the most unique opportunity given him to fight in the most literal sense for his personal freedom. Two salient observations were made about him early on. First, he was the example and inspiration for many slaves to run for their freedom and, second that he was one of the most effective leaders on either side of the war and his death was a significant loss to the
British war effort.
Utopia in Colts Neck
Intellectuals, inspired by the egalitarian and communal philosophies growing from the French and American Revolutions formed several dozen so-called Utopian communities in rural America. Brook Farm, in
Massachusetts and the North American Phalanx in Colts Neck are among the most prominent of such experiments. The North American Phalanx, sometimes called the Red Bank Phalanx, community was founded on 673 acres between the banks of the Hop and Yellow Brooks in Colts Neck (now partly in the reservoir, Thompson Park and Brookdale Community College area) and was one of the most successful and interesting of the Utopias. The
Phalanx was started in 1843, two years after Brook Farm, under the guidance of Arthur Brisbane and Horace Greeley, the New York Tribune editor.
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Brisbane, while a student in Europe embraced the philosophy of
Francois Marie Charles Fourier. Fourier taught that people are capable of living justly and comfortably in orderly self-sufficient communities. By forsaking individualism, people of similar mind could cooperatively care for each other’s needs and live in harmony. The word “phalanx” comes from the Greek for fingers of the hand, which though numerous, work together harmoniously.
ILLUSTRATION #12: North American Phalanx living compound (Monmouth County Historical Association, Colts Neck Website).
Large hotel-like buildings served as living quarters and dining halls for the several hundred members. A stream-powered mill ground wheat, rye, buckwheat, mustard, cornmeal and hominy grown on the Phalanx farm and on local farms. The mill pond was used for boating and other
Page 27 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History recreational activities. Other buildings served as a school, a nursery for children of working mothers, stables, workshops, a packing house and guest cottages. Gardens and landscaped grounds and an artificial pond made life pleasant.
Following a modified version of Fourier’s plan, the North American
Phalanx divided tasks into six categories: agricultural, manufacturing, livestock, domestic matters, entertainment and education. Each area had a chief who assigned work and met with the other chiefs at the end of each day to plan the following day’s activities. Community members had to possess useful skills and be accepted into the community after a probationary period.
Wages were paid, but were low because room and board were paid for from the profits of the farm. Interestingly, the highest wages were paid for the least desirable work.
After starting with a bumbling attempt at farming, local farmers were retained to teach the residents how to farm. Soon the Phalanx was successfully raising grain and fruit crops for its own consumption and for sale in Red Bank and New York. Fourier’s philosophy may have had no lasting impact on American life, but the Phalanx did produce the first cereal in a box. Some would contend that this is one of the great American achievements!
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Given the limitations of human nature, the Phalanx has to be considered a success for at least the dozen years before splits formed among members who, like the rest of contemporary society, argued over the need for abolition of slavery and the rights of women. Weakened by defections, but surviving, the end came in 1855 when a fire destroyed the flour and saw mills and the fire insurer turned out to be insolvent.
The Phalanx was communal but not a radical in that it was secular but permitted freedom of religion and members could own private property (in fact most of the founders and many residents were wealthy).
Many of America’s foremost thinkers visited the community including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, Nathaniel Hawthorne and
Lucy Stone (the suffragist).
A few remnant Phalanx houses remain as private residences in the
Lincroft area of Middletown. Phalanx Road which once bisected the
Phalanx grounds is still a major thoroughfare.
Water Wheels: Water Power
Colts Neck was settled a few years after Tinton Falls. The earliest documentation of the name “Colts Neck” was in 1675. Though the origin of the name is not known, a popular theory is that a tracing of the Yellow and
Mine Brooks, which are tributaries of the Swimming River, looks like the
Page 29 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History neck of a horse. More likely, the term “neck” meant a narrow area between two rivers, a condition that applies in several Colts Neck locales. There is also some opinion that the original name was “Cole’s Neck” and that
“Colts” became part of the vernacular because it was simply easier to say.
Colts Neck’s Yellow and Hop Brooks and their tributary streams were famous for the mills and mill ponds that abounded on them. Modern street names are indicative of the number and variety of mills: Bucks Mills Road,
Creamery Road (butter mill) and Hyers Mill Road to name some. Bucks
Mill, built in 1854 as a grist mill, was a landmark in Monmouth County for over a century until being lost to a fire in the early 1960’s.
ILLUSTRATION #13: Buck’s Mill water wheel still stands in 2003.
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On the Hop Brook there was a fulling mill. Fulling is cleansing and thickening of cloth. The mill was owned by William Lawrence and was one of the first of its kind in New Jersey. The former dam and mill where
Creamery Road crosses the Yellow Brook churned butter for the local dairy industry. Hyers Mill, now remembered by Hyers Mill Road was one of many saw mills operating in the watershed. Hyers Mill was the site of one of the great tragedies of Monmouth County history when its dam collapsed killing four workers who were attempting to remove ice flows from the mill pond.
Laird and Company, another early business operating on the Yellow
Brook since 1695, is the oldest operating distillery in America. Laird’s is still going strong making ninety-five percent of all the applejack in the
United States.
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ILLUSTRATION #14: Example of a small mill pond water wheel on McClee’s Creek, Middletown.
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Birth of a Great Reservoir
ILLUSTRATION #15: Swimming River Reservoir spillway viewed from Swimming River Road, Lincroft.
The Swimming River dam was built in 1901. This created the largest man-made change to the Monmouth County landscape up to that time. The growing population along the coast demanded water and a reservoir was needed to quench that thirst. Many people complained about the project. It was decried as “A Big Water Scheme” by Red Bank town leaders according to Red Bank Register in November of 1899. It is interesting to note that many in Red Bank supported their own artesian well water works.
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The “Scheme” had been temporarily delayed in political squabbling, but surveyors were soon at the site preparing for the inevitable. A century later Red Bank is drawing at least some of its water from the Swimming
River reservoir.
On May 2, 1900 the Red Bank Register printed an article that detailed what was about to happen:
SURVEYING FOR A RESERVOIR: TINTERN WATER COMPANY AT WORK AT THE PHALANX. The Tintern Water Company is making a survey for its proposed reservoir, which will be west of the Swimming River Bridge. A survey of the water level has been made and Civil engineer George Cooper is now making survey to ascertain how much of each man’s property along the proposed reservoir it will be necessary to buy. Options will then be secured on the land which will be overflowed by the reservoir. Some of the land to be overflowed is valuable for pasture land, while some of it is of little value. The dam for the proposed reservoir will be just above the Swimming River bridge. The height of the dam will be 37 feet and the distance from bank to bank at that point is about 200 yards. Some distance above the dam Yellow and Hop brooks meet, the two streams having their sources in different localities. Between the dam and the convergence of the two brooks the land will be flooded from bank to bank making a large and deep body of water. The reservoir pond will go back in the country nearly to Holmdel, a distance of about
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three miles. From this reservoir pipes will be laid to the towns along the coast in which the Tintern Water Company expects to do business. The building of a reservoir will necessitate the raising and rebuilding of the bridge on the road from Lincroft to the Phalanx and changing the grade of the approaches to the bridge. The water company last week bought about 75 acres from the William A. Walling farm at the Phalanx for which they paid $40 per acre.
ILLUSTRATION #16: Yellow Brook flows into the south fork of the Swimming River Reservoir.
Civil engineer George Cooper’s calculations were true, however, the dam built in 1901had an overflow of only15.4 feet and a 200 million gallon capacity. That dam was replaced in 1958 by the current 35 foot dam that can hold up to two billion gallons. The reservoir follows the contours predicted
Page 35 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History and effectively ended the small brook system that had endured for centuries.
As in the Tintern Water Company days, the Swimming River Reservoir, or as it is sometimes called the Monmouth County Reservoir, is still in private hands being owned and operated by the New Jersey-American Water
Company a subsidiary of the American Water Work Corp., a publicly traded company.
ILLUSTRATION #17: A farm pond in Holmdel Park is fed by a tributary of Ramenessin Creek. The Ramenessin tributaries drain the Holmdel hills and help fill the north fork of the Swimming River Reservoir.
Creation of the reservoir was an engineering feat that markedly changed the landscape of the county and dramatically influenced the course of future development. The availability of abundant water spurred the
Page 36 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History growth of light urban and suburban growth along the coast and inland parts of the county. The reservoir and the Garden State Parkway probably had the most significant impact on the county’s development.
ILLUSTRATION 18: Swimming Reservoir viewed from Dorbrook Park
Conclusion
History abounds in the Navesink River watershed. Fortunes, industries, ideas and even lives have been won and lost on its rivers and brooks. In the past people depended on the local rivers for livelihoods and the rivers were able to support a largely agricultural society. Today the historically charged rivers are still there and are still beautiful, but are
Page 37 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History
threatened by the exponential encroachment of land development in the
relatively recent past that continues through our times.
Acknowledgements
This Short History of the Navesink Watershed is an expanded version of the term
paper written by Kate Keelen for Mr. David Locke’s U. S. History II class at
Monmouth Regional High School, Tinton Falls, New Jersey. Many thanks to Mr.
Locke for getting this started. There is some primary research reflected in the text - mostly news articles found in the Red Bank Register. However, the majority of the historical details are from reprinted original source documents and facts uncovered through painstaking research by a number of dedicated historians. Special thanks to go the librarians at the Tinton Falls and Red Bank Public libraries and to the volunteers at the Monmouth County Historical Association in Freehold. All of the information written of can be found in one or more of the following texts:
Barber, John W. and Howe, Henry, Historical Collections of New Jersey, Best Books,
originally published 1845.
Barrett, William A., Editor, Historical Scrapbook of New Shrewsbury, New Jersey,
New Shrewsbury (Tinton Falls) Tercentenary Committee, 1964 and later
reprints. The best available collection of reprinted older historical works,
maps and Lenape land deeds pertaining to Tinton Falls. Special Note: Bill
Barrett, was a dedicated civic volunteer for Tinton Falls, and for many years
lived in a historic home near the Tinton Falls.
Bill, Alfred Hoyt, New Jersey and the Revolutionary War, Princeton, New Jersey, D.
Page 38 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History
Van Nostrand Company Inc., 1997.
Borough of Colts Neck, Colts Neck Natural Resources Inventory, prepared by the
Borough of Colts Neck, http://www.colts-neck.nj.us/env/nrichap6.html,
undated.
Brown, James S., Remember Old Monmouth, A Bicentennial Publication of the
Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholds in Cooperation with the
Asbury Park Press, Asbury Park: Asbury Park Press, 1976.
Colts Neck Historical Committee, History of Colts Neck,
http://www.westfilednj.com/whs/history/coltsneck.htm, undated likely 1965.
Fleming, Thomas, New Jersey, a History, New York, W.W. Norton & Company,
1984.
Gabrielan, Randall, Images of America, Colts Neck, Charleston, South Carolina,
Arcadia Publishing, 1998.
Gabrielan, Randall, Images of America, Middletown, Volume II, Dover, New
Hampshire, Arcadia Publishing, 1995.
Gabrielan, Randall, Tinton Falls in the Twentieth Century, Charleston South
Carolina, Arcadia Publishing, 1999
Hodges, Russell Graham, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, African
Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1665-1865, Madison,
Wisconsin, Madison House Publishers, Inc., 1997.
League of Women Voters, Greater Red Bank Area, Know Your Town Tinton Falls,
Tinton Falls, New Jersey, 1998.
Monmouth County Historical Association
Page 39 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,
www.monmouth.com/~mcha3/FAQ.html, updated Jan 6, 2001, Jan 6 2003.
North American Phalanx Collection, www.monmouth.com/~mcha3/coll5.html
Tinton Falls Iron Works Records, 1668-1761,
www.monmuth.com/~mcha3/coll7.html
Parnes, Robert, Canoeing the New Jersey Pine Barrens 4th Edition, Old Saybrook,
Connecticut, The Globe Pequot Press, 1994. Note: This is a classic book on
many levels. Mr. Parnes provides an excellent and understandable
explanation of geology and chemistry that produces bog iron in so many of
New Jersey’s streams.
Pomfret, John E., The Province of East New Jersey 1609-1702, The Rebellious
Proprietary, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1962.
Ryan, Dennis P., New Jersey in the Revolution, 1763-1783 A Chronology, Trenton,
New Jersey, New Jersey Historical Commission, 1974.
Smith, Samuel Stelle, Sandy hook and the Land of the Navesink, Monmouth Beach,
New Jersey, Phillip Freneau Press, 1963.
Unattributed Newspaper Reports:
“A Big Water Scheme” Red Bank Register, November 22, 1899, 1.
“Obstructing A Stream” Red Bank Register, November 21, 1900, 3.
“Protecting the Town” Red Bank Register, June 20, 1900, 3.
“Surveying For a Reservoir” Red Bank Register, May 2, 1900, 3.
“Water Scheme Killed” Red Bank Register, December 20, 1899, 1.
Page 40 NSRG The Navesink Watershed A Short History
ILLUSTRATION #19: Majestic oak in fall in Dorbrook Park, Colts Neck, near the south branch of the Swimming River Reservoir.
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