Learn About the Park

The river passing between wooded shores.

Photo by Tim Palmer; used by permission.

The Great Egg Harbor River corridor illustrates the intricate links between life and landscape in southern New Jersey. From the days of native Lenape Indians and early Dutch settlers, the river and surrounding sandy flatlands have shaped and been shaped by farmers, ironworkers, shipbuilders, fishermen, and glassblowers. Some trades have disappeared over the years, but many still reflect traditional ways of life tied to the land and the waterways.

Starting as a trickle near Berlin, New Jersey, the Great Egg Harbor River gradually widens as it picks up the waters of 17 designated tributaries on its way to Great Egg Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean. In its 59-mile southeasterly course, the river passes through or by pine and cedar forests, vegetable and fruit farms, large and small communities, office and industrial sites, county parks and state wildlife management areas. As the river flows on, the waters become increasingly tea-colored with iron and with tannin dissolved from cedar roots and fallen leaves. A dam at Mays Landing holds back the river to form Lake Lenape. Below the dam, the river widens and the “cedar waters” become mixed with the tidal saltwater of the ocean.

Much of the adjacent acreage is privately owned, so river access is limited, but roadways at many points afford views of the waterway and expansive marshlands. As they have for centuries, these marshes serve as major feeding, resting, and breeding havens for waterfowl on the east coast. Dutch explorers in the 1600s were so astonished by all the breeding birds and eggs at the mouth of the river that they named the bay Great Egg Harbor, and the river subsequently took on the same moniker.

Established by Congress in 1992, the national scenic and recreational river includes three free-flowing segments totaling 39.5 miles of the Great Egg Harbor River, plus 89.5 miles from 17 tributaries. This National Park System unit is unusual in that local jurisdictions continue to administer the lands. The National Park Service manages the designated river in partnership with the state, four counties, and twelve municipalities to protect the corridor’s valuable natural and cultural values for present and future generations to appreciate and enjoy.

Nearly all of the Great Egg Harbor River system lies within an area of more than one million acres traditionally known as the Pine Barrens and federally protected as the Pinelands National Reserve. Two key ingredients make up this largely undeveloped landscape: sand and water. The sand, deposited by an ancient river more than 20 million years ago, is more than 95 percent silica, so the water that percolates through it is low in organic mater and high in acidity. The water quickly seeps through layers of sand and beds of gravel to form one of North America’s largest underground reservoirs, or aquifers, holding 17 trillion gallons of fresh, drinkable water. On the surface, numerous bogs, swamps, and marshes dot the landscape.

Natural vegetation in the Pinelands varies with moisture and elevation. Pitch pine and scrub oak, with an understory of blueberry and huckleberry, dominate the dry uplands. In the lowlands, where moisture and organic matter are relatively more abundant, red maple and tupelo trees dominate with blueberry, sweetbay magnolia, holly, sweet pepperbush, and swamp azaleas filling in along the waterways. Stands of white cedar grow in the swampier areas, which are carpeted with sphagnum moss, grasses, cranberries, and pitcher plants. Tidal marshes around the lower portions of the river system are filled with salt-tolerant grasses.

Deer, chipmunks, squirrels, and turtles are commonly seen along the river. Seen less often are such nocturnal animals as raccoons, opossums, skunks, foxes, brown bats, and muskrats. Amphibians include the Pine Barrens tree frog and southern gray tree frog, both of which are endangered species in the state. Among the few fish species that can live in the acidic waters, pickerel are the most abundant. Two sunfish, the banded and blackbanded, live almost exclusively in the Pinelands. In the tidal waters below Lake Lenape, clams, mussels, and crabs multiply in the protein-rich marshes, mudflats, creeks, and harbor.

The lower wetlands are spawning and nursery habitats for alewives, American shad, and striped bass. Here, too, thousands of sea birds nest and breed, and thousands of waterfowl and other birds stop to feed and rest during their semi-annual migrations. Symbolic of all the burgeoning wildlife, rare peregrine falcons and bald eagles are increasingly sighted in havens along the Great Egg Harbor River.

John James Audubon and his time at Great Egg Harbor

“Many a drawing I made at Great Egg Harbor, many a pleasant day I spent along its shores,” painter-naturalist John James Audubon wrote in his diary. After failing at a few business ventures, Audubon wandered about the United States producing paintings of different bird species, which he later published as The Birds of America. His travels included visits to New Jersey. Born in Haiti and reared in France, Audubon moved in 1803 to a family estate outside Philadelphia. He spent a few years there and visited the city later in life to promote sales of his bird portraits. In 1829 he bargained with a fisherman to take him across the bay to the Great Egg Harbor area to sketch and do some “shooting and fishing, with long excursions in the surrounding swamps and marshes.” He stayed at the “house of a veteran fisherman and gunner” whose daughter was as “wild as a Sea Gull” and whose wife served a meal of oysters “as large and white as any I have eaten”.

“Dawn in New Jersey in June is worth a better description that I can furnish,” Audubon wrote. “…the moment the sunbeams blazed over the horizon, the loud and mellow notes of the Meadow Lark saluted our ears….I saw several Fish Hawks’ [ospreys’] nest on the tallest trees.…Except for the Florida Keys, Great Egg Harbor probably affords the naturalist as varied a field as any part of our Atlantic seaboard. Birds, fishes, and testaceous [hard-shelled] animals abound…. “I passed several weeks here…one day in search of Herons breeding in the swamps…another among the joyously crying Marsh Hens…or among the White-breasted Sea Gulls….or watched the gay Terns dance in the air before they plunged after tiny fry in the waters.” And, as indicated by these paintings, he closely observed a variety of sparrows and native plants. Today, the family estate is the Mill Grove/Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary, and the Great Egg Harbor River area remains one of the best bird-watching spots on the east coast.

Long before Europeans arrived in North America, the Lenape settled in this region and traveled about the waterways in their canoes. The Lenape hunted deer and elk, caught herring and shad in fish weirs, gathered berries and fruits, harvested clams and oysters, and raised corn, beans and squash. The Dutch first settled along the coast and up the riverways in the early 1600s and made their living primarily from fishing, trading, and, later, shipbuilding. The discovery of swamps full of rot-resistant cedars bolstered the shipbuilding and timbering industries in the Pinelands. Mays Landing was founded in the 1740s as both a port and shipbuilding town. Swedes and other Europeans moved into the area. During and after the American Revolution, pacifist Quakers, bootleggers, smugglers, and pirates sought refuge in the pine forests. Individualism became an enduring characteristic of Pinelands residents.

After the discovery of bog iron ore, furnaces were established to produce pig iron from which cast iron products were forged. Trees were harvested to make charcoal to burn in the furnaces. Gradually the settlers formed villages and built roadways to transport their goods. The iron industry thrived until the mid-1800s when higher quality iron ore was discovered in Pennsylvania, where coal could power the furnaces. With so much sand in this region of New Jersey, it is no wonder that glass-making blossomed in the mid-1700s. Glass manufacturing flourished for nearly a century and continues in varying degrees today in a few nearby communities. In the early 1800s entrepreneurs started making paper from salt grass fibers and from rags, but that industry lasted only about 100 years.

While some industries have come and gone, agriculture continues to be the area’s main economic force. With such extensive flatlands and so much water close to the surface, it is not surprising that the area has many farms raising vegetables, fruits, and berries and that New Jersey is known as the Garden State. As the riverway flows on and the tides move in and out, the evolving lives of plants, wildlife, and humans continue to be linked inextricably with the subtleties of the land.