2-27 : Exit 6 - Burleigh, Whitesboro
After a bit of a hiatus, I'm picking up the journal where I left off. A lot has happened in the past year. Cape May County is recovering nicely from the damage dealt by Hurricane Sandy, and
I've had a few events in my personal life, like getting married and buying a house and doing all the little things that go along with them . The good news ( for fans of the journal) is my new
home is in Cape May Court House and is a more centralized location , making fact finding explorations a lot easier than the half hour drive down from Woodbine that I used to do . So without
any further ado, let's get back to business.
Today's update features the eastern section of Middle Township, notably the villages of Burleigh and Whitesboro.
Burleigh (pronounced Bur-lee) tile. The area north of Oyster Road ( center E-W road running west from the south edge of the golf course) is Mayville. The Garden State Parkway is flanked by
U.S. Route 9 to the west and Golf Course Road to the east. Further west, Shunpike Road paralells the main North- South routes.
Mayville . Businesses line the west side of U.S. 9
Storage units on Oyster Road. A nice place to store belongings safe and secure from any floodwaters.
East of the Garden State Parkway is the Wildwood Country Club.(looking north)
Aerial view of the country club. looking east. Hereford Inlet is in the background.
South of Burleigh is the Whitesboro tile. North of Garden Lake (top, center) is Burleigh. South of the lake is Whitesboro.
Downtown Burleigh, such as it is. A small cluster of commercial buildings stand at the intersection of U.S. 9 and NJ 147. . The rectangular lake was formed when fill was excavated to build
the overpass of the Garden State Parkway over NJ 147. Groundwater subsequently filled the pit, forming a small lake. Garden Lake Mobile Home Park surrounds the lake.
A bit west of the intersection of 9 and 147 is the Middle Township Industrial Park. (right) and the local Home Depot.
Whitesboro, looking west across U.S. 9. Whitesboro was founded about 1901 by the Equitable Industrial Association, which had prominent black American investors including Paul Laurence Dunbar,
the educator Booker T. Washington and George Henry White, the leading investor and namesake. He was an attorney who had moved to Philadelphia after serving as the last black Republican
congressman representing North Carolina's 2nd congressional district. White and his fellow entrepreneurs wanted to create a self-reliant community for blacks, without the discrimination faced
the southern states. * (1)
Shares in the planned community were sold to African Americans from North and South Carolina and Virginia. Once approved, a colonist would receive a number of lots, each 50 feet by 150 feet
(about a sixth of an acre) for a down payment of $5 per lot and a promise to till the land. The residents were under no obligation to build a home or any other structure on their lot, but the
land was promised to be good for growing farm produce and raising chickens, so building homes was encouraged. Colonists had ten years to pay off the initial purchase price of fifty dollars
and were charged an additional $2 to $5 a month depending on their income. In addition to purchasing the initial land for the town, the George H. White Land Improvement Company reinvested its
profits back into the community. Although most of the town’s residents were preoccupied with farming the land, many residents were employed by the Improvement Company to construct the first
buildings and roads in the community. * (2)
The new Christ Gospel Love Center was built in 2005 to meet the needs of a growing congregation. To the annoyance of its members, it is often jokingly called "Oprah's Church". Stedmon Graham,
Oprah's companion is a Whitesboro native and was a 1,000 point scorer for the Middle Township High School basketball team . Members of the church are quick to point out while Ms. Winfrey
donated the funds to build the ballfield, the funding for the church itself was raised by the congregation.
Southwest of Whitesboro is the Edgewood section of Middle Township. It's basically a few homes built along the the winding road from Green Creek to Whitesboro.
The Indian Trail tile, containing the western sections of Burleigh. I had to name it something, so I took the name from the road (CR 618). Indian Trail is so named because before settlement
of the county, it was a major trail used by the Kechemeche tribe to travel to and from thier camps in the woods on the western side of the county ( what is now Green Creek and Dias Creek) to
hunting and fishing grounds near Hereford Inlet.
A closer look at the sand and gravel mines north of Indian Trail.
Grassy Sound tile. Heading east from Garden State parkway exit 6 , the road was once an unimproved road leading to a rickety wooden drawbridge over Grassy Sound Channel . This was a
secondary connection to the resorts on Five Mile Beach Island. During the Great Depression squatters built shacks on State owned land, (usually suspended over the marshes atop pilings). By
the 1970s, citing a need to alleviate traffic problems caused by the growth of the Wildwood resorts and a need to provide an additional evacuation route in the event of storms, the state
reasserted its control of the area and ordered the squatters evicted and thier homes demolished to make way for an improved causeway topped by a 4 lane highway.
A closer look. The ruined remains of the railbed of the Pennsylvania RR North Wildwood line lies to the north of the highway. It was abandoned in the 1930's and the marshes have reclaimed
much of the former rail line's causeway.
Looking west along North Wildwood Boulevard. Burleigh is in the background.
Well, that's all I have for this installment. I hope to be updating the journal on a more regular basis. Stay tuned !
(1) wikipedia- Whitesboro, NJ
(2) www.blackpast.org/aah/whitesboro-new-jersey-1902
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