Rusting cars on the Columbia Trail

I was biking on the Columbia trail thru califon and came across these cars. they’re definitely on someone property so I kept a respectful distance.

 

 

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Fire on Clausland Mountain near tunnels of Tweed

A fire on Clausland Mountain is finally under control after more then 24 hours. Several homes were threatened, but local firefighters were able to prevent any damage to them. The mountain is more than 300 acres of woodlands with hiking trails thru out. The mountain is home to the Bluefields Rifle range, more commonly known as the tunnels of tweed

pictures from the inside of Demon’s Alley

Many years ago the New City development owned by the Newark Watershed Commission was demolished after numerous arson fires set to the abandoned buildings there. The buildings had become an eyesore and a source of great trouble as curiosity seekers often (illegally) explored the buildings because of rampant rumors of murder, witchcraft and bizarre events that were alleged to have occured there. I explored these ruins once but didn’t do more then wander around the 8 abandoned buildings. The buildings themselves were in such a state of disrepair that safe discovery was not possible. I took a few pictures thru the windows but never entered them.

Several years ago I was sent pictures taken from inside the buildings. You can see all the pictures here. The ruin is… impressive.

a giant auto graveyard in central jersey

I came across this location thru a friend. he was kind enough to tell me the location on condition I not reveal it. So I won’t. So don’t ask. This place is unlike any place I have ever seen. it has all manner of vehicles including RV’s, ancient pickup trucks, jeeps, numerous types of trucks, construction equipment, fire trucks, flatbed trailers, bulldozers, even asphalt paving machines. There are easily 60-70 vehicles here in a variety of states of decay.

Then there is the debris, refuse and construction material. It really is a junkyard, a dumping ground. i did some research into the place and it appears to be an old farm that was later bought by a large corporation for reasons unknown. I am researching ownership further to try and determine the history of the place.

all the pictures on flickr

Boonton Park exploring

In a park in Boonton there are some nice hiking trails, as well as some abandoned stone structures set into a hill and an old rail line.

Abandoned PA farm

This farm lies not far from the Delaware on the PA side. it sits on state forest land and is on a hiking trail. Every building has a do not enter sign and for once I followed the rules. There’s 6-7 buildings and there was plenty of beauty to take pictures of outside. Judging by the price of the gas on the pump I’d say this farm was abandoned (or bought out) around the early 70’s, making it as older then me. The only thing of true note was the old fashioned drying press I found in one building. You ran the clothes thru two rollers and it squeezed the water from the clothing. There’s a fair amount to see here and I enjoyed the trip.

Abandoned pickup truck

what happened to the door?

no tires here

I have visited the jet in the woods well over a dozen times and not once did I have a clue that only 500 feet away lay this abandoned pickup truck. I stumbled onto it when trying to visit the jet recently and I got disoriented on my way. There’s not much here to see but it’s been pretty well stripped and trashed. No idea how long it’s been here, but it’s a while. Don’t ask where this is. if you already know where the jet is, take the trail north on your exit just past the small knoll. It’s real close.

Welcome IO9 and NY Scout readers!

I knew when i got up this morning that NY Scout had visited the jet in the woods because my site notifies me whenever someone else links to me. He was quite gracious enough to comment about my site a few times in his post (which I appreciate, as opposed to him just saying this is cool!). When I came home form work i went to IO9 and saw they had linked to Scout’s page and it seems we’re both getting a lot of traffic as a result. Today marks the best day I’ve ever had in terms of hits. I average about 10-15,000 page hits a month, or about the same as the Cheetos website. I think that’s pretty cool since I this is an obscure hobby which I do not promote outside of the community, I do not advertise for, nor do I advertise on. Today I got almost 3,000 hits and the day isn’t over. To make it easier, here’s a link to the most relevant pages about the jet in the woods since that’s what most people want to see today.

This is the main original post, notable for the heated debate over what kind of plane it was. A fan and fellow geocacher named Ian helped ID the plane after finding markings under the wing. This settled the debate.. I am friends with local Bergen Record reporter Bill Ervolino and he wanted a weird neat local story, so I took him to the jet which he wrote an article about. I later discovered that someone had cut a piece of the jet out presumably for scrap metal.

My favorite post is this one Ian Rothesberger, a conestant on Survivor was interested in creating a tv show about urban exploration and need some subject material for the pilot episode. He had heard about the jet but did not know its location, so I showed him. He eventually interviewed Ian and myself (the other Ian, the one who ID’d the plane) for the pilot episode. They are still shopping it around to the networks as far as I know. It was a fun, muddy day. If anyone has questions, feel free to ask, but don’t ask me for directions. I’m loathe to give them and in this case I flat out will refuse. After seeing how someone carving a piece out of the jet I refuse to take any more chances, so no directions. Any such requests will not even merit a response from me.

excellent post about the ruins of Cliffdale Manor in the NJ Palisades

I’ve done a fair amount of research on the NJ Palisades and I’ve visted all the ruins but I never knew much about the largest of the ruins in the park. This website not only runs down the history but has some awesome old pictures that show what it was like when it was in use. Well worth checking out.

Someone has cut a hole in the fuselage of the jet in the woods

I have covered the jet in the woods several times here on my blog. It generated quite a debate over what kind of plane it was until a local geocacher located the model # on the wing. I visit periodically and the last time was about a year ago when I went showed it to Bergen Record Columnist Bill Ervolino I visited the jet in the woods today and was shocked when I realized that someone had cut a piece of the fuselage out with a sawzall. This was the jet 5 years ago.

Here it is today.

I brought a friend with me and he commented that the jet might not be there given the rise in value of scrap metal. He told me the airplane was made from aluminum and that it wouldn’t be too hard to cut off pieces of it. I laughed at the idea commenting “even the military felt it was too much of a pain in the ass to remove it from these woods. How would anyone possibly do that now?” I guess if you have a sawzall you can cut it down to size and then it’s easy to remove….