Pinelands Historical Timeline
Written by: author and historian Barbara Solem-Stull,
“Walk through the Pinelands historical timeline to understand the past and present.”
Children worked side-by-side in the early 1900s with their parents picking cranberries at Whitesbog Village in Pemberton, New Jersey.
170 to 200 million years ago Atlantic Coastal Plain begins to form.
100 million years ago Start of sequence in which the Atlantic Ocean repeatedly covered the coastal plain and then withdrew, depositing layers of geologic material now beneath the Pinelands.
10,000 years ago End of the last Ice Age; present plant and animal populations begin to develop; earliest Native Americans appear.
1624- Exploration of coastal inlets and bays reported.
1674- Earliest permanent European settlers occupy area north of present Burlington County line.
1700-1760 Many hamlets and coastal towns settled based on shipbuilding, commerce and timber-based trades.
1700- present Transportation network, roads and railroads, built throughout the Pinelands. U. S. Route 9, the Shore Road, is an historic road that runs along the coast in what is now the Pinelands National Reserve.
1758- Brotherton Reservation, this countrys first Indian reservation, is established at Indian Mills in Shamong Township, Burlington County. (Buy the book)
1760-1860 Iron, charcoal, and glass industries flourish.
1830- New Jersey census lists 655 sawmills in the state; today there are about 75 sawmills in the state.
1840- John Webb establishes New Jerseys first cranberry bog in Ocean County near Cassville.
1864 L.N. Renault Winery established in Galloway Township.
1878- Joseph Wharton, a Philadelphia financier, proposes exporting Pinelands water to Philadelphia. The New Jersey legislature rules against this.
1905- New Jersey State Forest Service established.
Today’s Pinelands are a result of geological transformations occurring over millennia, with humans beginning to shape the landscape 10,000 years ago. Whitesbog general store Kevin Husta European settlement brought towns and industries to the Pines, and began to change the landscape in ways previously unseen. The ghostly remains of industrial villages like Martha, where an iron furnace operated in the early 1800s, and Harrisville, where a paper mill flourished in the late 1800s, can still be seen.
Company towns like Double Trouble Village, a cranberry farm and packing plant, and Whitesbog Village, where Elizabeth White domesticated the blueberry, are today well-preserved examples of a bygone way of life in the Pines. Ruins of Harrisville, a once thriving industrial village and paper mill. Today, several hundred thousand people inhabit the Pinelands, with many commuting to employment centers on the edge of the Philadelphia metropolitan region. And while the manufacturing industries of previous generations have faded away, large-scale cranberry and blueberry farming continue to provide an economic foundation for the region.
