The area’s unique plant life also attracted early botanists. These industries made the Pine Barrens a valuable source of lumber and other materials needed to manufacture pitch, tar, and turpentine, leading to the growth of sawmills and early Pinelands towns such as Browns Mills, Dennisville, Tuckahoe, and Port Elizabeth. Because of the environs’ poor soil, the region did not attract significant European settlement until the late seventeenth century, when colonists began establishing whaling and shipbuilding settlements on coastal perimeters of the woodlands. The best-known native inhabitants were the Lenape, who used controlled fires to remove underbrush that discouraged hunting and agriculture. While the land proved unable to support intensive agriculture, these early residents created small settlements sustained through hunting and fishing. The area was also home to James Still (1812-82), the self-taught “Black Doctor of the Pines.”Īrchaeological evidence indicates that humans began inhabiting the region around 10,000 B.C.E. Notable residents of this region have included Deborah Leeds (1685-1748), who, according to folklore, gave birth to the Jersey Devil, a legendary winged monster with cloven hooves and a forked tail. Much of this habitat is contained within the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve, a 1,100,000-acre area that spans seven counties and occupies about 22 percent of the state’s land mass. The Pine Barrens are characterized by high water tables and acidic, nutrient-poor, sandy soil, which supports a broad range of plant and animal life, including rare insectivorous plants, dwarf pine species, and the Pine Barrens tree frog. A young girl and boy carry fifteen-pound pecks of cranberries to the “bushel man” at Forsythe’s bog outside Pemberton, New Jersey. Although inhospitable to most forms of intensive agriculture, the Pinelands have been a crucial site for the commercial farming of blueberries and cranberries, two of New Jersey’s most valuable fruit crops. The Pine Barrens have, over time, been a home to Native American populations, a center of early American industry, a hub of military activity, and a focus of ecological and recreational interest. New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, the forest and wetlands area also known as the Pinelands or the Pines, have played a varied but vital role in the region’s cultural and economic history. Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You Back.
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