Exploring New Jersey's original 17th century turnpike

BY ERIC MODEL

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

JOURNEYS INTO NEW JERSEY

The reaction of folks is often not one of surprise when they hear that New Jersey is home of perhaps the oldest continuously used road in the United States. After all, we are one of the first states and our history goes back much further.

However, there is surprise when they are told of the exact location of this first thoroughfare.

Many would assume that it is a road from New York to Philadelphia or from historic New Jersey communities such as Trenton, Princeton, New Brunswick, Perth Amboy, or Elizabeth.

In fact, that oldest road is on the other side of the state near the Delaware River. It’s called the Old Mine Road.

At a length of 104 miles, the Old Mine Road stretches from the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area up to the vicinity of Kingston, New York.

It dates back as far as the late 17th century and is considered the first road of any great length built in the United States.

From its earliest days, this road has had various names. First recognized as “The Trade Path”, it gradually became known as the King’s Highway or the Queen’s Highway, and then the “Path of the Great Valley” (1682), before the name “the Old Mine Road” started to stick (1737).

It is traditionally believed that Dutch miners began construction of the road in the 17th century in order to transport copper ore from the Pahaquarry Copper Mine along the Delaware to Esopus, New York, situated along the Hudson River in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. Many historians now discount much of this theory; nevertheless, the road was also known as “The Good Esopus Road”.

Starting in the late 17th century, Dutch settlement began on the road began in the Kingston area. The road follows roughly the course of what later became the Delaware & Hudson Canal for its northern half, and the Delaware River in its southern half through the western edge of Sussex County and northern Warren County towards northwestern Jersey.

The road exists today, and although its New York length has been modernized, widened and incorporated into U.S. 209, its stretch in New Jersey as the "Old Mine Road" is largely undeveloped as it travels through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. The road still retains much of its historical and rural charm. Historic sites in both states assert the area's Dutch colonial heritage through the preservation of several homes, farms, and churches, though the threat of 21st century “progress” in the form of development and sprawl is not so far from the location.

But in a land where too many of the aspects of the past have been lost, signs of this past can still be found.

Perhaps it’s all worth a ride to enjoy - while you can.

Acknowledgment to source: “That Ancient Trail” by Amelia Stickney Decker; Stryker Press, 1942; Reprint 1952.

For an interesting tour of the Old Mine Road in New Jersey, see: http://www.njskylands.com/hsoldmine2.htm

Eric Model explores the "offbeat", off the beaten path overlooked and forgotten" on Sirius XM-Radio and at journeysinto.com.