Most people think of New Jersey as a suburban-industrial corridor that runs between New York and Philadelphia. Yet in the low center of the state is a near wilderness, larger than most national parks, which has been known since the seventeenth century as the Pine Barrens. The term refers to the predominant trees in the vast forests that cover the area and to the quality of the soils below, which are too sandy and acid to be good for farming. On all sides, however, developments of one kind or another have gradually moved in, so that now the central and integral forest is reduced to about a thousand square miles. Although New Jersey has the heaviest population density of any state, huge segments of the Pine Barrens remain uninhabited. The few people who dwell in the region, the "Pineys," are little known and often misunderstood. Here McPhee uses his uncanny skills as a journalist to explore the history of the region and describe the people—and their distinctive folklore—who call it home.

Pine Barrens: Ecosystem and Landscape focuses on the relationship between the ecological and landscape aspects of Pine Barrens of New Jersey. The idea in this book is based from the discussions of Rutgers University botanists and ecologists at the 1975 American Institute of Biological Science meetings, and from the interest generated by the 1976 annual New Jersey Academy of Science meeting, which focuses on the Pine Barrens. This seven-part book starts with a short discussion on location and boundaries of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Part I covers human activities, from Indian activities and initial European perceptions of the land, including settlement, lumbering, fuel wood and charcoal, iron and glassworks, farming and livestock, and real estate development. The next part of the book describes sandy deposits, geographic distribution of geologic formations, and soil types with their ecologically important characteristics. Topics on hydrology, aquatic ecosystems, and climatic and microclimatic conditions are presented in the third part of this reference. Part IV traces the history of vegetation starting before the Ice Age and analyzes vegetation using different approaches, such as community types, community classification according to a European method, and gradient analysis. Plants of the Pine Barrens are briefly described and listed in Part V. The final part illustrates community relationships of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, arthropods, and soil microcommunities. The book is ideal for ecologists, botanists, geologists, soil scientists, zoologists, hydrologists, limnologists, engineers, and scientists, as well as planners, decision-makers, and managers who may largely determine the future of a region.

Presents legends and lore of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, an area occupying roughly one million acres.

In the course of its extraordinary history, the Jersey Devil has been exorcised, shot, electrocuted, declared officially dead, and scoffed as foolishness--none of which has had any effect on it or the people who persist in seeing it!This mysterious creature is said to prowl the lonely sand trails and mist-shrouded marshes of the Pine Barrens, and emerge perioducally to rampage through the towns and cities of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, leaving many communities in near-hysteria.The authors show that while a few appearances have been out-right fraud and others have likely been the result of mass hysteria, this creature has been seen by enough sane, sober, and responsible citizens to keep the possiblity of its existence alive and tantalizing.Over 50,000 in print

Series title taken from publisher website.

Chaseworld is a study of the foxhunters in the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. Mary Hufford examines the activities that occur before, during, and after foxchases and analyzes the stories that hunters tell about chases. Through these activities and narratives, she contends, Pine Barrens foxhunters have collaboratively constructed an alternate reality—the Chaseworld.

Presents a pictorial history of New Jersey's Pine Barrens, and the people who lived there during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Composed, for the most part, from sketches that were published in the Courier-Post newspapers of Camden, New Jersey, Beck provides us with a series of stories of towns too tiny or uncertain for today's maps. Together, these sketches help to create a more complete picture of the history of New Jersey. A connecting skein of untold or little known wartime history--the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the conflict of North against South--runs through most of the sketches. Many of the sketches concern the pine towns and their people, "the pineys" who lived in the Jersey pine barrens.