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RYAN: New Jersey is not a big state. Actually, it's the fourth smallest state in the U.S.
SFX - CAR DRIVING, SEAGULLS, WAVES, AMTRAK HORN, BASKETBALL, SKIING, HELICOPTER
RYAN: You can drive from the borough of Montvale in Bergen County to the beach town of Cape May in just about three hours. You can take Amtrak from Newark to Philadelphia for a 76ers game in a brisk 60 minutes. And you can travel from Manhattan to the Poconos for a day on the slopes in roughly two and a half hours - even faster if you’re going by helicopter!
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RYAN: But New Jersey is also the densest state in the U.S. It averages 1,200 people per square mile. It's got 545 places - towns, municipalities, boroughs, villages - crammed into just 8,723 square miles. So when you consider how easy it is to cross New Jersey and the excitement of places like New York, Philadelphia, the poconos and the shore enticing you to zip on through the state, how does any small New Jersey town compete for your attention?
The town of Clinton has been luckier than most. Starting in the 1870s a spur of the Lehigh Valley Railroad stopped in Clinton giving people who would otherwise just be passing through a chance to fall in love with its small town charm. Then, just as the New Jersey railroads were going bankrupt, Clinton was connected to the interstate highway system. From then on rural Hunterdon County was open to visitors via Route-78.
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RYAN: Clinton even got the honor of getting its name on the highway signs.
RYAN ON SCENE: So I’m on 78 West. And I see a sign for Clinton, Pittstown and the Red Mill Museum…
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RYAN: Welcome to Hometown History, a series about the iconic places and events that make a town someplace people call home - stories that people can tell to their friends old and new about the place they live, did live, or will live. The small town of Clinton wasn’t always linked to New Jersey’s major cities. But when the railroad age dawned, Clinton demanded a place on the map—and won. Later, as highways carved paths across the state, the town battled once more for a link to the wider world…and prevailed again. Those victories brought connection, opportunity and consequences.
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RYAN: Clinton New Jersey is not a port city, or a community on the edge of a larger metropolis. Before railroads and highways came along, you likely wouldn’t find yourself in Hunts Mills (later Clinton) unless you were passing through on one of the state’s early roads.
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SFX - HORSE TROTTING, COWS MOOING
RYAN: In the 1700s, New Jersey settlers criss-crossed the state using paths created by local Native American tribes. These trails were given names like Washington’s Turnpike, and Old York Road.
Early turnpikes ran through private property. They were owned by groups of wealthy gentlemen who charged travelers a hefty fee to use the road. Often the turnpikes were muddy, hilly, and full of rocks. They were quickly worn down by foot traffic, wagons, cattle and horses. They were rarely repaired because, well, there was no other path for travelers to take. (You could try an alternate route through the woods, called a “Shunpike” but that usually came with its own set problems).
In the early 1800s industrial towns like Clinton had access to limited markets, based on these very rudimentary roads. Which meant things wouldn’t really pop off for places like Clinton, until they could get goods - and people - to and from the town faster, and more cheaply via railroads.
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DAVID: Perhaps America's first great rail pioneer was a New Jerseyan.
RYAN: That’s David Alff, author of the book The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, The People, The History, The Region.
DAVID: John Stevens III was a colonel in George Washington's revolutionary army. And after the war was over he acquired land in what is today Hoboken.
RYAN: Yes, that would be the very same Stevens that the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken is named after.
DAVID: And he began tinkering with a very early form of the steam locomotive. Stevens set up a demonstration track on his property where people came and they got to watch this very primitive form of a steam locomotive orbit around this circular track.
RYAN: Wait! Does this mean that New Jersey was the birthplace of the railroad??
DAVID: I think you could say that New Jersey is one cradle for railroad infrastructure, but a lot of states have historical placards claiming the first railroad.
RYAN: Damn…well, we tried.
DAVID: But New Jersey is incredibly crucial to railroads. The state was eager for new forms of transportation. During the war of 1812, a British naval blockade wreaked havoc on state logistics. The blockade took a lot of freight and passengers that would've been on ships and put them onto land, onto carriages.
SFX - ARTILLARY, MEN SHOUTING, CANNONS
RYAN: Stevens promised that trains would be a safe, reliable, inland all weather link through the Garden State that would also connect the two great port cities on New Jersey's border: New York and Philadelphia. But it took a while for the idea of railroads to catch on in New Jersey. Stevens actually pitched the idea to DeWitt Clinton as a way to connect upstate New York. But as we now know DeWitt was committed to the cause of the Erie Canal. They say hindsight is 20/20 and all that, you know.
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RYAN: Eventually, railroads did start getting built throughout New Jersey.
DAVID: The Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Redding Railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Lehigh Valley Railroad.
RYAN: Hang on David. We’re gonna stop here at the Lehigh Valley Railroad because that’s where our story in Clinton begins.
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DAVID: What became the Lehigh Valley Railroad originated in the mid 19th century in Pennsylvania. The line was chartered to transport anthracite, which is a compact form of coal that was mined in northeastern Pennsylvania.
RYAN: So the Lehigh Valley Railroad started out as a regional freight line - that is, it carried coal, not people - to a very limited number of places. But it eventually expanded all the way to New York Harbor in the east, and Buffalo and Niagara Falls in the west.
DAVID: If you look at maps of the Lehigh Valley railroad system over the decades, it looks like a kind of house plant reaching for the sun.
RYAN: Ooo nice metaphor.
DAVID: And the sun here is water or ports. So it's stretching out toward New York Harbor to the east. It's stretching to the north, up to Lake Ontario, and it's stretching west to Lake Erie so that there could be outlets for all of this anthracite, which would've been one of the predominant sources of power in the late 19th and early 20th century.
RYAN: The green leafy tendril of the Lehigh Valley Railroad began reaching for New Jersey as early as 1872. The line would eventually run from Phillipsburg on the Delaware River to Perth Amboy, N.J. And along that path, the Lehigh Valley Railroad would pass right through Hunterdon County.
JOHN: That's the postcard I bought maybe 20 years ago. That's the Lansdown station. It's the only card I’ve ever seen of that station.
RYAN: That’s John Kuhl - a long time Hunterdon County resident.
JOHN: I grew up in Three Bridges. It was just a tiny little town. It didn't have anything, except a couple grocery stores.
RYAN: John can trace his family roots in Hunterdon back to the mid 1700s - when members of his family were farmers and orchard owners.
JOHN: My great-grandfather had the first commercial peach orchard in Hunterdon County back in the 1800s. We had half the peach trees in New Jersey were here in Hunterdon.
RYAN: Even the little town of Three Bridges was connected to the railroad.
JOHN: And Three Bridges was unique. You know, it was a tiny little town. It was about 300 people when I was born. My dad had a feed mill and the railroad came right up to the buildings and we would get rail cars and we'd unload 'em. We bought local grain, but the oats, we couldn't find heavy oats around here, so that would come from Canada. It would have maybe 18 passenger trains a day. People didn't have cars. That's how they went places.
RYAN: The problem was the railroad didn’t stop at every small town. The main branch of the Lehigh Valley Line ran east and west through the towns of Three Bridges, Stanton, Landsdown and Pattenburg, just missing Clinton by about two miles. Residents of Clinton had immediate FOMO.
JOHN: Every town wanted a railroad and if they didn't have one, they felt deprived and so they would promise help to the railroads.
RYAN: The leaders of Clinton organized several campaigns to pressure the Leigh Valley Railroad to build a spur - that is, a little offshoot - that would go from Landsdown two miles north to Clinton.
JOHN: A lot of these spurs were built on the promise of the traffic from the peach freight. Freight is what made money.
RYAN: In the 1870s Clinton probably made a similar appeal to the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Something like, “Hey, give us a railroad and just look how much money you’ll make from transporting our peaches. You don't want some other company to profit from our orchards do you?”
However things went down, the railroad eventually took Clinton up on their offer. In November of 1881 an article in the Hunterdon Republican announced the opening of the Clinton branch of the railroad.
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FEMALE VOICE 1: “The branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad from Landsdown to Clinton, two miles in length, was formally opened on Tuesday. Invitations had been extended by the Mayor and Common Council of Clinton to the officials of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and others to participate in the opening festivities. Arriving at Landsdown we found a train in waiting, filled with prominent citizens of Clinton, including a very large number of ladies and about all the school children in the place. The train soon transported us over the new branch to Clinton.”
RYAN: After that, they paraded on foot, led by the Clinton Cornet Band, to nearby Weller’s hotel for a banquet dinner and speeches. Nothing like a parade to make sure everybody knows what’s going on. A toast was made to “the good people of Clinton, who had contributed their energy and cash for the construction of the road.”
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Clinton was really feeling itself. The arrival of the trains gave a major boost to local commerce. With easier access to goods, signs of a more urban lifestyle began to appear around town—like more fashionable women’s clothing. Even home construction changed. When things like brass fixtures and slab marble became available, Clinton’s wealthier residents built more ornate houses.
In less than a decade, Clinton had gone through a “She’s All That” style makeover. In 1898 it published a tourism booklet of pictures, railroad timetables and literature about the town. It was called “Picturesque Clinton.”
FEMALE VOICE 2: Clinton New Jersey, The Place Beyond Compare for Life or Leisure in the most favoring Environments. The Richest Rural Region of the East. Charming Views of Vale and Mountain on Every Side. Shaded Walks, Good Drives and Boating. Best of Trunk Railroad Connections to All Points. Frequent Fast Trains to the Great Cities. Unfailing Water Power, Complete Electric Plant. Rare Sites Reserved for Works and Shops.
RYAN: In 1896, the Lehigh Valley Line debuted its premier passenger train - the Black Diamond Express. Clinton residents could now travel faster and farther than ever before. The town was officially connected to distant destinations like Jersey City and Buffalo, New York.
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RYAN: American railroads reached the height of popularity during World War II when demand for freight and passenger traffic hit levels it had never seen before. But in the 1950s, railroads faced growing competition for convenient ways to transport goods and people. One of it’s major rivals was the newly developed interstate highway system.
DAVID: If you are a factory shipping products or shipping parts or raw materials across states trucks could drive point to point without requiring transfers from freight yards to trucks to get to their final destination.
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JOHN: Well the railroad was just too unwieldy for passengers. It didn't go where you wanted to go usually. I mean if it was on the Main Line, it would've been better, but it wasn't. They had to get off and get on this little dinky thing. And there were only, I dunno how many of those a day? Maybe eight. Maybe less as time went on…it was an awkward trip.
RYAN: In Clinton, passenger trains started to feel like an inconvenient, outdated way to travel. The Lehigh Valley Railroad ended its passenger service to Clinton in the late 1930s. Recall that around this same time the town of Clinton was reportedly getting a little “tired and dingy.”
There’s no clear evidence that ending passenger service in Clinton directly caused the town’s decline—but it certainly didn’t help. It was as if a vital artery supplying life and energy to the town had suddenly been cut off.
Clinton remained in a tired, worn-down state for more than a decade— that is, until the era of the Red Mill Five. Around the same time, a new lifeline was taking shape: a fresh connection that would begin to restore the energy and vitality the town had lost.
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RYAN: Alright, let’s get back on the road…more specifically on Route 78 heading east through Hunterdon County.
RYAN ON SCENE: This is the highway that was put down years ago. Yeah, this cuts right through the town.
RYAN: Following those signs for Clinton takes you to Exit 15. Head off and to the right and you’ll find yourself immediately on West Main Street.
RYAN ON SCENE: Exit 15…and look at that. They got a Dunkin.
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RYAN: I’ll admit, when I first visited the town, I was surprised that Clinton was situated so close to the highway. Or actually, that the highway was built so close to Clinton. Soon I learned that it had something to do with the roads that came before it.
CHRIS: A lot of highways also follow small roads because that was the road that was there before the highway.
RYAN: Christopher Matthews is an historical archeologist and Professor of Anthropology at Montclair State University. When the railroad came to Clinton it was because of Clinton’s persistence - residents practically demanded it. It was the same for the highway. You see, the town of Clinton (actually, Hunts Mills) formed not far from one of those colonial era turnpikes we mentioned earlier. This one was called the Jersey Turnpike.
The Jersey Turnpike Company was officially incorporated in 1806. It quickly went from being a country road to a main thoroughfare. In the 1920s the portion that ran through the town of Clinton was renamed Route 22. For many years, all car traffic along Route 22 funneled through the town. And this worked fine for a while. But things got hairy when cars became the dominant mode of transportation in the 1950s.
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CHRIS: It was all connected to the automobile manufacturing industry. They needed people to have to have their cars. They were just sort of like, this is the thing we want, we want everyone to have a car. The more cars they build, the more jobs they create, the more successful the middle class becomes in the 1950s. And this is the Great America that some people talk about, when there was a lot of opportunity to change the way your life is, change your children's lives, by just doing basic labor.
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RYAN: The cars that were responsible for furthering the American dream were also starting to choke Clinton’s main thoroughfare. In a “Letter to the Editor” in the Courier-News from 1952, the author warns of a ”hazardous bottleneck” on Route 22 through Clinton, noting there have been “over 54 serious accidents there, some of them fatal.”
In an echo of its days lobbying the Lehigh Valley Railroad, Clinton residents petitioned the State Highway Department to construct a two mile by-pass of Route 22: essentially, a road that diverts traffic around Clinton’s downtown.
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MALE VOICE 1: “Everyone who drives a car in North Hunterdon County knows about the two-mile bottleneck. All the state police know every foot of the route. So do the ambulance drivers from High Bridge American Legion post, Whitehouse Rescue Squad and Somerset Hospital, Somerville.”
RYAN: The Route 22 bypass of Clinton appeared to have near universal support from residents of the town. But it wasn’t clear how the project would get funded, or if it would even be considered. Luckily, this was the start of America’s highway boom.
CHRIS: The fifties was a desire to throw loads of money to build a more efficient infrastructure system that could go anywhere.
RYAN: This was the ethos of the 1950s - better, faster, safer roads for American cars. And the government stepped in to help.
CHRIS: And they're known as the Eisenhower Interstate System because it was under Eisenhower's administration. A highway that doesn't stop for anything. No stoplights not going through towns. And you can be from point A to point B really quick.
RYAN: The federal government wanted new roads so badly that it offered to cover up to 90 percent of the cost of state highway projects. And New Jersey jumped at the offer. Its first highway to take advantage of the (fairly ridiculous) payment structure for new highways would be Route 78 - an interstate highway that would run east to west across the state. Right. Past. Clinton.
JOHN: Well, I mean, you look at Clinton now. This is how Route 78 and Clinton looked when they first built it. And it was just bare country.
RYAN: Clinton got the Route 22 by-pass incorporated into the state’s plans for Route 78. In fact, it was the first section of the new highway to be completed. The Clinton Route 22 by-pass officially opened in February of 1958. It was such a momentous occasion that newspaper reporters were there to cover it.
MALE VOICE 2: “The first car over to the eastbound lane was driven by Dutch Chrysler and driven by Joseph Lesczynski, 24, of Sayreville, who was en route to New York. The second eastbound car was westbound! But the confused driver managed to get turned around near a Mobil Shopping Center and drove a direct Miss Jersey Turnpike to Morris Park. He told reporters he traveled to Clinton daily but didn’t expect to hit Friday’s defense bypass link.
J. C. Couple of Annandale was first over the Westbound lane. He seemed a little bewildered by reporters who stopped his car. His first comment was: "Tell me what this is all about?"
After being informed that he was the first car over the Westbound lane, he good-naturedly consented to pose for photographers.”
RYAN: Clinton had its bypass - but now it would also be getting a brand new interstate highway running from Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania to the Holland Tunnel, right past Clinton. And residents weren’t sure how to feel about that.
About a decade into I-78 construction, the Hunterdon County Planning Board commissioned a study to look into how the highway would impact the communities it would run through. The results of the study were a bit more ominous than anyone had anticipated. The authors wrote that I-78 “will serve as a catalyst to generate substantial economic change” along its route and will “challenge the very fabric” of the communities falling within its sphere of influence.
Uh oh! What started as a by-pass to help with traffic through town was going to end up being a highway that would “challenge the very fabric” of their community. Over the two decades it took to construct the highway, much of what the study predicted would happen, for better or worse. For example, the businesses that lined Route 22 through Clinton saw less traffic, and fewer customers. Local farms were bought up or bisected to allow for highway construction - with little apparent pushback.
CHRIS: Someplace like Clinton in the 1950s, there's just not a lot of people. And as most places work, you have the business sector who tend to be also the political sector and they want opportunity. And other people do get frustrated because if it's a farm the highway can cut your farm in half, right? You know, and you don't hear about it as much because it's one farmer versus a community of people.
RYAN: But I-78 also brought to Clinton the prosperity it had promised. Inspired by the new highway, The "Red Mill Five" created a long-term plan to revitalize Clinton, fix up its historic sites, and attract tourists to boost the local economy. More young people moved to the town to take advantage of the new highway. They made their presence felt at town council meetings and in local social groups, delighting Clinton’s old-timers.
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You could say Clinton had gotten its groove back.
JOHN: And finally they built the 78, then it really boomed. You know, little towns that were 200 or 300 people were all of a sudden a thousand. And there was industry here in Union Township, Foster Wheeler - they did engineering all over the world. And Prudential, Exxon was here. It happened so gradually. You know, it's like dipping your toe in the ocean. It's a little cold at first, but you get used to it after a while.
RYAN: Now, we fast forward two decades. By 1989, Clinton’s population had ballooned from 3,700 residents to over 9,500. The price of an average house in Clinton had more than tripled. Real estate developers cited the completion of the highway in their promotional materials. For example, Inside a brochure for a new town house and condo development in Clinton, the ad copy read: “Clear sailing from our front door to the Holland Tunnel and everywhere in between”.
But the completion of the highway also brought some stormy seas as well. In nearby Bridgewater, the town council adopted a resolution asking the state DOT to correct noise problems in the area. Residents said the noise became unbearable after Route 78 was completed and trucks began using it.
By the early 2000s, Hunterdon County - and Clinton specifically - was still advertising its small town charm coupled with its potential to connect new residents quickly to nearby metropolitan areas via Route 78. And the traffic had only gotten worse. In 30 years the number of cars passing through Bendmister on Route 78 rose 500 percent. A 2005 promotional article for Clinton in the Courier News ran with the title: “Quaint Town, Quaint Stores.”
FEMALE VOICE 3: “Architecturally stunning and environmentally picturesque, Clinton's businesses prove that there is more to the town than pretty store fronts, the Raritan River and the Red Mill Museum.”
RYAN: Underneath that article was another one, with the headline “Highways a headache for the area.”
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RYAN: So what’s the moral to this story? I’m not sure there is one. Maybe it’s “be careful what you wish for” but that doesn’t seem to be sufficient. If Clinton had not advocated for a stop on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, or petitioned for a by-pass that would turn into a major interstate highway then it might not have seen the type of economic and cultural growth that it did over the last 150 years.
What would Clinton be were it not for the stately late 19th century homes made possible by the railroads? What would happen to the boutiques and coffee shops on Main Street if not for the visitors who travel via I-78 to see the town’s iconic Red Mill?
Even though someone like John Kuhl can see how much Hunterdon County has grown thanks to the interstate…he’s still a little nostalgic for the days when there were fewer cars on the road.
JOHN: These little towns all had everything they needed until the automobile came along. They all had grocery stores, clothing stores, hardware stores. And then once people got cars, they shopped in the bigger towns and that was the end of the small town business.
RYAN: There are contradictions inherent in progress, and sometimes old ideas come back around. Clinton lost its access to passenger rail service because of the speed and efficiency of the interstate. But some residents wouldn’t mind bringing back alternate modes of transportation to Clinton, especially one that is a little more slower paced and…would cause fewer traffic jams.
DAVID: People have been talking about restoring passenger rail service to Phillipsburg and on into the Lehigh Valley almost as long as it was first abandoned. You can see that once a community loses rail, it's very hard to get it back.
JOHN: They keep talking about passenger service. Well, I don't know. We'll see.
RYAN: But you know what? Clinton has successfully argued its case twice before. It could certainly happen again.
Next time on Hometown History, a family feud that spawned a rivalry between Clinton’s two 19th century banks.
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This episode was written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. It was mixed and edited by Katie Feather. Our theme music is La Danse Timide by Howard Harper-Barnes. Voiceover work in this episode performed by Rachel Boutin, Katie Hammond, and Matt Giroveanu. Special thanks to Dave Harding, Pat Robinson and John Kuhl at the Hunterdon County Historical Society. Additional thanks to Christopher Matthews at Montclair State University and David Alff at SUNY Buffalo. David’s book, The Northeast Corridor, is out now.
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