[AT] Nice photo-farmhouse and mower
Rob Gray
robgray at epix.net
Sat Mar 13 21:41:21 PST 2004
Regarding old farms, we still have a lot of older farm homes in this
region even from the pre-revolutionary war era. One interesting area
near me is the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation area. This is
about 50 miles of the upper Delaware River on both the NJ and PA sides
of the river. The federal government was planning to build a large
hydro-electric dam on the Delaware and they scooped up hundreds of farms
and small towns by imminent domain in the 1960's. These confiscations
occured while the land was still rural before any suburban sprawl had
occured. Needless to say, the plan for the dam fell threw in the 70's
after being fought by environmentalists and locals who opposed the idea.
That left the federal government with huge tracts of land and old farm
houses and barns built from the the late 1600's through the 1800's. Some
of the land is still farmed under lease from the gov't, but no farmers
live there now. Unfortunately many of these old farm buildings fell
victim to arsonists and vandals once they were vacant, but some are
maintained as museums or are lived in by park employees. If you ever
have a chance to visit the area around the Delaware Water Gap, just head
north along the river on either side and you will see some of these
places (it is better to have 4 wheel drive since many of the roads are
rough and unpaved). I recently visited one of the museum buildings which
was a farm/inn before the revolution. The stone house is very
interesting if you find that sort of thing of interest. I was there
because I wanted to get some hints on how to restore some parts of my
old stone farmhouse. Unfortunately, the unique early 1700's dutch styled
barn next to the house was burned by arsonists soon after the government
confiscated the land. Apparently many of the locals were less than happy
with the seizures.
The NJ side of the river has an old roadway called the Old Mine Road.
The attached link discusses it a bit. Some might find it interesting:
http://www.njskylands.com/hsoldmine.htm
http://www.njskylands.com/pkdwgnra.htm
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