The South Jersey Land and Water Trust host guided walk through Pinelands woods to peculiar Blue Hole
Tales of mystery and folklore surround the mysterious body of blue water located through the Pinelands woods in Williamstown. While many claim the area is the stomping grounds for the notorious Jersey Devil, a volcanic vent or the result of a meteor crater, South Jersey Land and Water Trust Project Manager Michael Hogan’s guided walk in the woods, scheduled to have taken place on Saturday, Jan. 20, taught the historical facts of the natural and cultural Blue Hole.
Located off a sand road branching from Piney Hollow Road in Monroe Township, the enigmatic Blue Hole is approximately 100 feet in diameter along the Great Egg Harbor River. According to Hogan, while the river is brown in color, the Blue Hole is teal blue as a result of algae organisms, although, he said, occasionally due to heavy rain flooding the river into the Blue Hole, the color can be subdued. Hogan said the Pinelands, where the Blue Hole is located, is one of two United Nations Biosphere Reserves on the eastern shores of the U.S. The other is located in South Carolina.
Hogan’s fascination with the Blue Hole began in the late 1970s when he would visit after a rainstorm and gather artifacts from the wetlands surrounding the area. Long ago, he said, the location was famous for an Indian settlement when they would canoe or travel the Great Egg Harbor River. In the past, people visiting the area would also camp in the area and dig pot-holes trying to find the Indian artifacts left behind. Hogan said in his attempts, he has discovered pieces of old pottery shards, jasper and flint chips from tool making, as well as a handful of arrowheads.
Hogan said there are also rumors of a sawmill that had been located in the area of the Blue Hole, owned by the Inskip family. On the walk, Hogan said, embankments along the river were seen, suggesting it had been dammed for power to run the mill, which would have milled the native Atlantic White Cedar. There are also stories of an old railroad that would have transported the milled lumber out toward the Black Horse Pike. However, any trace of these establishments have disintegrated over time.
“It’s a shame; like a lot of other places in South Jersey, a lot of the history is just gone,” Hogan said. “Then, you have this void where people make up silly stories about places like that.”
Many theories propose the Blue Hole is a bottomless pit. However, Hogan said he has walked across the body of water without it rising above his neck. While there is no proven evidence of how the Blue Hole formed, geologists suggest it is a glacial feature from the ice age.
“Five thousand years ago, there were giant ice ridges in North Jersey and New York, and all of South Jersey was a tundra then,” Hogan said. “Because of all of the ice, there was a constant wind that blew, and the constant winds blew an impression in the sand to the point it reached the ground water.”
Hogan said it’s also possible the Blue Hole was created by the owners of the sawmill, if the sawmill theory were to be accurate.
Hogan said many years ago, the land surrounding the Blue Hole was known as “berryland” because of all of the blueberry fields and farms, many of which still exist. In the ’70s, he said, locals believed the Blue Hole was a story made up by the locals to keep outsiders away from the woods where they would make fruit liquor during Prohibition.
As an amateur botanist and avid photographer, Hogan enjoys visiting the Blue Hole and the trails that lead to it because of the variety of rare plants and creatures that reside there, including a variety of carnivorous plants such as sundews, the northern pitcher plant, bladderworts and more.
“There’s so much cool history about this place — the natural history, the art history and the people who settled there,” Hogan said. “There’s not many places in the Pinelands trails I haven’t explored, or rivers I haven’t canoed, and I have never seen anything I couldn’t determine what it is.”
To learn more about the South Jersey Land and Water Trust and its upcoming events, visit sjlandwater.org.
