No. 16 Vol. 3
www.mypaperonline.com
March 2018
Borough Names Open Space Property Seward Hill Preserve
O
By Jane Primerano ver the years, Morris County residents developed good poker faces while informing their visitors they would take them to the farm where Bell Telephone grew its telephone poles. The abbreviated poles are still “planted” on the Highlands Ridge Park property that now belongs to Chester Township and probably still result in dou-
ble-takes from unsuspecting passers buy. Actually, they are poles from different species of trees placed on the lot to demonstrate how they weather in the northern New Jersey climate as part of the phone company’s outdoor testing. Next door to the 113 acres of Highlands Ridge is a 64-acre tract in Chester Borough now named for its original owners. The open space property was
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named by Chester Borough at its Tuesday, Feb. 20, meeting. The unanimous decision was to name the property at 50 North Road the Seward Hill Preserve. The tract was purchased from Alcatel-Lucent, the successor to Ma Ball, in 2009. The land is designated for passive recreation. Borough Mayor Janet Hoven said there are four existing buildings on the property. Two pole barns are used by the Chester Department of Public Works. One small building is leased to the Chester-Mendham Sport Club and the other is vacant, Hoven said. An adjacent 22acre parcel is also owned by the borough, which repurposed buildings on the site as the municipal building and the board of education headquarters. The borough issued a press release explaining the history of the property and the Seward family immediately after the decision was made
The outdoor testing facility of Bell Telephone was called the “telephone pole farm” or “telephone pole forest.” Photo by Jane Primerano
to name the tract. The family came to Chester in the 1700s. In her 1974 book, “Chester, New Jersey, A Scrapbook of History,” Frances Greenidge, Obiadiah Seward was a “Black River Patriot” during the Revolutionary War. The Sewards farmed the land as “”Welcome Home Farm” until they sold it sometime around 1801 to the pastor of the Chester Congregational Church. Hoven said the pastor lived there, but it wasn’t the site of a church. The Sewards didn’t disappear from the area. A
portion of one of the family homes is on Seward Place in the borough. Bell Telephone acquired the property in 1928, by which time it was known as Seward’s Hill. Greenidge wrote the telephone company liked “its altitude of over a thousand feet and its ‘particularly good wind exposure on open wires’,” for use as an outdoor testing facility. The “telephone pole forest,” as Greenidge called it was installed in 1929. John and Willard Apgar, who were descendants of some of Chester’s
earliest settlers, installed the Christmas Star on the hill, but Greenidge doesn’t have a date. Hoven says borough volunteers still set up the star each year and maintain it. Greenidge writes that one Bell employee brought a high powered telescope to use on top of the hill. She said legend holds on a clear day the men could count 33 floors of the Empire State Building. A trail system winds through both municipalities with many native plants and frequent appearances by wildlife.