The Park’s Warren E. Fox Nature Center is the perfect starting point for a day or more of outdoor exploration and wildlife viewing. Walk the trails and go inside to see the exhibits and meet the friendly and knowledgeable staff. Pick up all three Birding and Wildlife Trails, brochures, which include detailed directions for the trail below, as well as eleven other driving routes.

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Three species to look for on the Great Egg Harbor River Romp trial: Northern Harriet, Kevin Karison; Diamondback Terrapin Hatchling, Torry Geiger; Pine Barrens Treefrog, Matt Webster; Red-spotted Purple Butterfly, Tony Geiger.

(Education • Animals) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Estellville Glass Factory operated from 1825 until 1877. The glassworks was made up of about fifteen buildings. The Pot House, the Melting Furnace, and the Flattening House, and Lime Kiln were used in the glass-making operation, and workers lived in ten to twelve nearby houses. The ruins that remain are the Pot House, the Melting Furnace, and Flattening House.

The glassworks was built by John H. Scott in 1825, on land owned by the Estells. Daniel E. Estell bought the business in 1834; his brother John and his brother-in-law Josiah Franklin also owned shares. The Estells lived in the John Estell House and the Estell Mansion in the village of Estellville, along what is now Route 50. The houses still stand, as does the company store and a Methodist church, a one-room school, a sawmill and a grist mill have disappeared.

The Estells owned their own sailing vessels, docked on the nearby Stephens Creek, which delivered glass to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and returned with supplies for the company store. The Estellville Glass Factory was sold to John Baptist Stadler and John Getsinger in 1860. After that, it passed through the hands of a number of owners and operators, and was converted to the production of bottles before it closed in 1887. Estellville Glass Factory was part of a thriving early nineteenth-century industry in South Jersey, where a plentiful supply of silica sand for glass, wood for fuel, and creeks and rivers for transportation to market, led to the development of numerous glass factories. At the same time, the process of making window glass from blown cylinders was developed, and replaced the earlier process of crown glass, in which window panes were cut from disks of glass. Glass-making declined throughout South Jersey by the last quarter of the nineteenth century because more efficient coal-fueled and steam-powered plants were being built outside the region; old fashioned wood-fueled plants which were not modernized could not compete.

The Estellville Glass Factory is unique among early South Jersey glass factories in its construction of native sandstone with brick-headed arches. Because of the nature of the glass-making process, many glass factories were lost to fire. The masonry construction at Estellville may have been an attempt to avoid such a fate.

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Window glass cylinders being blown at a melting furnace

(Industry & Commerce) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The pots were about two inches thick, thirty inches high, and forty inches wide. Each one could hold 1500 pounds of molten glass, and cost as much as $100 in nineteenth-century dollars to manufacture. Pot manufacture was done with fastidious care, since a flaw in construction could cause a pot to crack and spill melted glass inside the furnace. When this happened, the furnace had to be slaked, shutting down all production, and a dozen men had to labor for hours to extract the broken pot.

Imported clay from St. Louis, Missouri; Germany or England was preferred for the pots though some South Jersey factories used clay from Newcastle, Delaware. After being formed the moist clay pots were dried from two months to a year.

A few days before a pot was needed it was moved to an area of the Melting Furnace, probably on the west side, nearest the Pot House, for pre-heating.

In the side room of the Melting Furnace, the pot was slowly heated to between 80 and 100 degrees. Next, it was moved into a separate small furnace called the Pot Arch, and heated to the temperature of the main furnace. Finally, it was moved into the main furnace, and the furnace was resealed.

Window glass was made from a mixture of silica sand, lime, and potash recovered from the furnace. The raw materials called a “batch,” were dumped into the pot through a small hole in the front of the furnace, and that hole was temporarily plugged. The batch was then left to melt for about twenty-four hours. The intense heat limited the productive life of a pot to an average of seven weeks.

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Historic photograph of the pot house. (Inscription below the image in the center left) Tracking clay for melting pots.

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Building up a melting pot.

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Mixing the batch.

(Industry & Commerce) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Next, a heated rod was run down the length of the cylinder until it made a groove; when the cylinder was touched with a piece of wet metal it split along the groove. At this point the split cylinders were stored on wooden racks until they were needed in the Flattening House.

When the split cylinder was moved to the Flattening House, it was placed on a smooth rotating “stone” made of fired clay. Here it was reheated, causing it to unfold, and smothered with a block of wood until it was a flat rectangle.

It was then lifted off the stone with a long-pronged fork and placed on a car at the mouth of the annealing oven, or lehr, also located in the Flattening House. The annealing oven was a long, low rectangular chamber, intensely hot at the end near the oven, and cooler at the far end. The flattened glass slowly passed through the oven, in a controlled cooling that left the glass free of built-in stress.

The final step was carried out in the Cutting House, where the 32” by 40” glass sheets were cut into window panes. This was the domain of the cutters, who were socially and financially at the top of the heap of glasshouse workers. They were the only employees who wore collars and ties while working and they were paid more than even the glassblowers. This reflects the importance placed on their work; a poor glass cutter could waste a lot of glass in this last stage of manufacture. One cutter could keep pace with the output of several glassblowers.

Very little was wasted in the glass manufacturing process. Broken glass, called “cutlet,” was remelted as part of the batch; ash from the furnace was recycled as one of the raw materials of the glass; and even the caps removed from the ends of the cylinders were retrieved and used as glass bells under which wax fruit was displayed.

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Blowing hole in cylinder.

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Cracking off end of cylinder.

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The cutters

(Industry & Commerce) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The furnace was at the center of the building. Before use, wood was dried and stored in the northeast corner of the building. The fire of the furnace was stoked with wood by men standing in the stoke pits below floor level, on the east and west sides. The fire was intense, with a powerful draft. A glassblower at a plant in Clayton recalled seeing a man sit down to eat a sandwich, only to have it whisked out of his hands and up the chimney.

The raw material had to be prepared before being mixed. The sand was dried and heated in sand kilns, probably in the southeast corner of the building. The lime was prepared in the lime kiln, located south of the Flattening House. The potash was removed from the furnace after firing s and stored until used. The materials were mixed to form the batch as they were needed.

The batch was melted in pots placed on a masonry platform above the fire in the furnace, called the “siege”. Wooden platforms referred to as “benches” were built on the north and south sides of the furnace; these provided access to the molten glass inside the furnace, and gave the glassblowers elevated stations from which to work.

The Gatherer
Glassblowing was team effort which took fast coordinated action, practiced skill and great strength. The “gatherer” started the process by thrusting 5 foot long, 30 pound iron blowpipe into the furnace and collecting a 50 to 70 pound glob of melted glass called “metal”. The only protection the gatherer had from the ferocious heat was a wooden mask, with eye slits fitted with blue or amber glass, which he held in place by gripping a mouthpiece with his teeth. The gatherer fanned the molten glass into a solid cylinder by using a wooden mold, and then handed that blowpipe to the glassblower or gaffer.

The Glassblower
The glassblowers were master craftsmen, who took great pride in their work. They needed the strength to wield the 100 pounds of blowpipe and molten glass, and the skill to turn the glob of glass into a cylinder ten inches across and five feet long, with sides a uniform thickness of 1/8 inch, all within five to ten minutes.

This feat was performed as the glassblower stood on the elevated bench, working over the swing pit, which was about three feet deeper than the floor level. The cylinder was formed through a combination of blowing through the pipe, and swinging it over the pit to elongate the piece of glass through centrifugal force.

Some glassblowers chained themselves to posts to counteract the weight of the glass. Others disdained such precautions, and put themselves in serious danger, sometimes losing their balance and falling into the swing pit covered with hot, broken glass.

When the wall of the cylinder was a uniform thickness the cylinder was removed from the blowpipe and prepared for annealing and flattening.

The blowers of window glass cylinders were regarded as the masters of glassblowing. The five-foot long cylinders could tolerate a few imperfections, unlike the less critical bottle glass. A glassblower was paid not according to how many cylinders he blew, but according to how many boxes of usable glass were cut from his cylinders, he was not compensated for imperfections and thickness out of tolerance.

(Industry & Commerce) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The two and half story home was constructed of sandstone, and is of vernacular Federal architecture.

The last family descendant to live there was Rebecca Estell Bougeois Winston, Daniel Estell’s granddaughter. It was her home until her death in 1933. Mrs. Winston, the first woman mayor in New Jersey, was elected mayor of Estell Manor in 1925.

(Notable Buildings) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Society was incorporated on December 10, 1831 as part of the Bargaintown Circuit, and existed when the New Jersey Conference was organized in 1836. It became part of the Mays Landing Circuit when separated from the Bargaintown Circuit in 1852.

The church served more than thirty families, but attendance eventually declined as did the glass, iron and lumber industries in the area. When, in 1917, Bethlehem Steel built a shell loading plant along the South River the church closed for good. Through the efforts of the Friends of Old Estellville Methodist Church Committee, and anniversary service is held every year on the first Sunday in October.

(Churches, Etc.) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

At its most active times, about 200 men were employed here. There was a sawmill, gristmill and about 50 homes.

Power for the furnace bellows was generated by building a dam below Head of the River and constructing a raceway to the furnace waterwheel, which still may be seen.

Bar iron for spikes (6 inches to two feet) and bolts for ships were made here. The furnace, once in “blast”, operated continuously for about 9 months of the year and only shut down for repairs and cleaning when the river froze.

(Industry & Commerce) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

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The Head of the River Methodist Episcopal Church is on both the National and New Jersey registers of Historic Buildings and Sites.

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Head of the River M.E. Church and Cemetery-Est 1792. This plaque was presented on October 12, 2003 by the New Jersey Sarah Soper Chapter of the National Society Colonial Dames XVII Century, to recognize the historic significance of this site and its importance to the community and its people.

(Churches, Etc. • Colonial Era) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

As a result of this chance meeting, a small society of Christian believers formed at the Head of the Tuckahoe River. By 1781, the society was meeting in the sawmill of Jeremiah and William Smith not far from the location of the present church. Within a few short years, the society outgrew the sawmill and it became necessary to begin thinking about building a house of worship. The new building, still under construction, was dedicated in 1792.

With the church as a focal point, surrounding communities prospered for more than a century. By the late 1930s, new modes of transportation and routes of travel forever altered the future of the area. Local industries and business began vanishing, families moved away, and houses and farms slowly disappeared---bringing about the regression of the Head of the River, Methodist Episcopal Church. Traces of these former industrial enterprises can still be found with careful observation.

(Churches, Etc. • War, US Revolutionary) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

“Women were a perpetual presence on the American agricultural landscape.” –Annette Baxter, Historian.

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Historic Cold Spring Village reflects the social and agricultural history of Cape May and the women who contributed to its rich history. Farm women are included in the New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail because of the integral role they played in the domestic life of their families.

(Lower box) The New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail highlights a collection of historic sites located around the state that represent the significant contributions women made to the history of our state. The Heritage Trail brings to life the vital role of women in New Jersey’s past and present.

(Colonial Era • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Phragmites replaces healthy salt marsh plants when man-made channels, roads, bridges, and construction restrict the tides and lower the water table. The quality of wildlife habitat is also reduced by limited diversity, food sources, and open water space. Eradicating Phragmites requires several applications of herbicides and burning, or water level management.

While the over-abundance of the Phragmites is often a reflection of human disturbance, it is also a reminder of the delicate balance in nature.

(Environment) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The earliest written account of this legend is from the mid-19th century Journal of New Jersey Senator Dr. Reuben Willets, who was the nephew of James and Rebecca Willets.

“The Revolutionary War worked severe hardships on woman as well as men in New Jersey. New Jersey’s location between New York and Philadelphia made it the “cockpit” of the Revolution as the military struggled to occupy the two cities. General George Washington moved his army across New Jersey four times during the war years. The encampment of British and Hessian forces, and of the Continental army, brought fear and misery to Jersey residents. During the numerous military engagements, family life and businesses were disrupted, consumer goods were scarce and expensive, and disease took its toll among the civilian as well as military populations. “
Carmela Ascolese Karnoutsos in Past and Promise, Lives of New Jersey Women.

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Artist Bill Cassedy; the painting is displayed at the Cape May County Historical & Genealogical Society in Cape May Court House, NJ.

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Beesley’s Point known as Golden’s Point in the 18th century, is on the New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail because of the resourcefulness of Revolutionary War Heroines Rebecca and Sarah Stillwell.
(Bottom box)
The New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail highlights a collection of historic sites located around the state that represent the significant contributions women made to the history of our state. The Heritage Trail brings to life vital role of women in New Jersey’s past and present.

(War, US Revolutionary) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Sindia en route from Kobe, Japan to New York City was stranded in Ocean City during a southeast storm on December 15, 1901. Just northeast of this site, she lies broadside to the boardwalk, with her bow pointing south, carrying a cargo of porcelain, fine china, bamboo matting, camphor oil, manganese ore and wax. The ship broke in half and flooded on the third day and much of the cargo was lost. There was no loss of life due to the heroic efforts of the Ocean City Live Saving Station, under the command of Captain J. M. Corson, which is still located on the corner of Fourth Street and Ocean Avenue. Artifacts and a video story of the Sandia can be seen at the Ocean City Historic Museum located in the Cultural Arts Center, 17TH Street and Simpson Avenue.

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This site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior.

(Waterways & Vessels • Disasters) Includes location, directions, 5 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

On October 20, 1879, Simon Lake, Ezra B. Lake, S. Wesley Lake, James E. Lake, William Burrell and William B. Wood, met to dedicate this island as a Christian seaside resort and to incorporate the Ocean City Association. By October 1880, a total of forty-eight buildings had been constructed around a prayer meeting area bounded by 5th and 6th Streets and Wesley and Asbury Avenues.

Many more structures were erected during the 1880’s and 1890’s that reflected the Victorian architecture popular during the era. Many of these buildings still stand and make up our historic district.

(Churches, Etc. • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.