Lost Towns of the Pine Barrens

The next several posts are going to deal with iron making in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

From the mid 1700’s until the late 1800’s New Jersey’s Pine Barrens was a hot bed of iron making. The Pine Barrens has a unique ecology. Most forested areas progress over time from grasslands, to brush , to softwoods like pine, then onto hardwoods. The Pine Barrens have never gotten past the softwood stage. That is key to the success of the iron making process that took place.


Pine needles are highly acidic. Lining the forest floor, they decompose and get rained on. That now highly acidic rain water soaks down through the sandy soil. As it soaks through the soil and the clay beneath it it leaches soluble iron from the clay.The underground water supply, or aquifer, in the Pine Barrens is shallow, close to the surface. At times it reaches the surface. When it does it deposits this iron along the banks of rivers, streams, swamps, and bogs. Thus the name bog ore.

Iron makers would harvest this bog ore in long boats. They would bring back the ore to places like Batsto, Atsion and hundreds of other iron furnaces and forges that dotted the pines.

More on another vital role played by the pine trees in this process, next time.