The Real History Hidden Under Clinton Road's Legends – Cross Castle & the Lost Iron Village | Part 4
Route Decoded
52 views
A 40-foot stone tower stands alone in the woods beside Clinton Road. For decades people thought it was a pagan altar. The truth is stranger.
In Part 4 of our Clinton Road series we leave the ghosts behind and dig into the real history of West Milford, New Jersey: the iron country of the Highlands, Peter Hasenclever's Long Pond Ironworks (1766), Robert Erskine – Washington's mapmaker – and the Clinton Furnace, built by William Jackson from 1826 and in blast only 1833–1837. We follow the village of Clinton as it vanished, Newark's 1900 watershed that froze the land in time, and Richard James Cross – Liverpool-born banker, one of New York's "Four Hundred", brother-in-law of George Eliot – who built Bearfort House, the real "Cross Castle", in 1905–1907. Sold to Newark in 1919, burned, and demolished in 1988: only the stones remain.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Clinton Road – Part 4
0:06 Part 1 – Fire and Iron
6:52 Part 2 – The Village That Vanished
12:14 Part 3 – The Man Who Built a Castle
17:55 Part 4 – Only the Stones Remain
▶ Part 1: Clinton Road – America's Most Haunted Highway Decoded
▶ Part 2: Clinton Road's Darkest Secret Wasn't a Ghost – The Iceman Case Decoded
▶ Part 3: The Clinton Road Legends Nobody Told You
▶ Part 5 (next): Jungle Habitat – the safari park swallowed by the forest
SOURCES
– Wikipedia: Clinton Furnace; Richard James Cross; Long Pond Ironworks State Park
– National Register of Historic Places: Clinton Furnace (1976)
– Historical Marker Database: Clinton Ironworks
– Wikipedia: Robert Erskine; Clinton Road (New Jersey)
No photographs of Cross Castle were available under a free licence; the castle scenes use period and landscape stand-ins.
IMAGE CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons)
– Famartin – Bearfort Ridge Trail (Abram S. Hewitt State Forest), Monksville Reservoir and NJ Route 23, West Milford (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Zeete – Bearfort Mountain fire tower; Clinton Ironworks information sign, West Milford (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Ccrabb1948 – Long Pond Ironworks (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Miguel.v – Posts Brook from Norvin Green State Forest Lower Trail (CC0)
– Kritzolina – Fog in Wawayanda State Park 01 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Northlightpainter (English Wikipedia) – Plein Air Painters at Long Pond, Ringwood, NJ (CC BY 1.0)
– LandyFeeled – Water Wheel Burned 2 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Daniel Case – Ringwood Manor spring 2015 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
– Mathew Schwartz – Farm Wheel (CC BY 3.0)
– Zoesd7 – Tuxedo Park School photo (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– AgnosticPreachersKid – Levi P. Morton House (CC BY-SA 3.0)
– Rand McNally and Company – Greater New York illustrated (1907) (No restrictions)
– Internet Archive Book Images – Old New York yesterday and today (1922); Locomotive engineering (1897) (No restrictions)
– Midland Railway Crampton Locomotive No 131 (1848) (Public domain)
– Alfred R. Waud – The Mississippi at New Orleans (1872) (Public domain)
– Fitzroy iron works, Mittagong, c. 1873 (Public domain)
– Edward Williams Clay – The times, panic 1837 (Public domain)
– New Jersey State Normal School at Montclair catalogue (1910) (No restrictions)
Some b-roll is AI-generated video (Google Veo) and is not real footage.
Narration: AI voice.
MUSIC
"Investigations" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
#ClintonRoad #CrossCastle #NewJerseyHistory #IronFurnace #GildedAge
The Real History Hidden Under Clinton Road's Legends – Cross Castle & the Lost Iron Village | Part 4
Route Decoded
52 views
A 40-foot stone tower stands alone in the woods beside Clinton Road. For decades people thought it was a pagan altar. The truth is stranger.
In Part 4 of our Clinton Road series we leave the ghosts behind and dig into the real history of West Milford, New Jersey: the iron country of the Highlands, Peter Hasenclever's Long Pond Ironworks (1766), Robert Erskine – Washington's mapmaker – and the Clinton Furnace, built by William Jackson from 1826 and in blast only 1833–1837. We follow the village of Clinton as it vanished, Newark's 1900 watershed that froze the land in time, and Richard James Cross – Liverpool-born banker, one of New York's "Four Hundred", brother-in-law of George Eliot – who built Bearfort House, the real "Cross Castle", in 1905–1907. Sold to Newark in 1919, burned, and demolished in 1988: only the stones remain.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Clinton Road – Part 4
0:06 Part 1 – Fire and Iron
6:52 Part 2 – The Village That Vanished
12:14 Part 3 – The Man Who Built a Castle
17:55 Part 4 – Only the Stones Remain
▶ Part 1: Clinton Road – America's Most Haunted Highway Decoded
▶ Part 2: Clinton Road's Darkest Secret Wasn't a Ghost – The Iceman Case Decoded
▶ Part 3: The Clinton Road Legends Nobody Told You
▶ Part 5 (next): Jungle Habitat – the safari park swallowed by the forest
SOURCES
– Wikipedia: Clinton Furnace; Richard James Cross; Long Pond Ironworks State Park
– National Register of Historic Places: Clinton Furnace (1976)
– Historical Marker Database: Clinton Ironworks
– Wikipedia: Robert Erskine; Clinton Road (New Jersey)
No photographs of Cross Castle were available under a free licence; the castle scenes use period and landscape stand-ins.
IMAGE CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons)
– Famartin – Bearfort Ridge Trail (Abram S. Hewitt State Forest), Monksville Reservoir and NJ Route 23, West Milford (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Zeete – Bearfort Mountain fire tower; Clinton Ironworks information sign, West Milford (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Ccrabb1948 – Long Pond Ironworks (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Miguel.v – Posts Brook from Norvin Green State Forest Lower Trail (CC0)
– Kritzolina – Fog in Wawayanda State Park 01 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Northlightpainter (English Wikipedia) – Plein Air Painters at Long Pond, Ringwood, NJ (CC BY 1.0)
– LandyFeeled – Water Wheel Burned 2 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– Daniel Case – Ringwood Manor spring 2015 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
– Mathew Schwartz – Farm Wheel (CC BY 3.0)
– Zoesd7 – Tuxedo Park School photo (CC BY-SA 4.0)
– AgnosticPreachersKid – Levi P. Morton House (CC BY-SA 3.0)
– Rand McNally and Company – Greater New York illustrated (1907) (No restrictions)
– Internet Archive Book Images – Old New York yesterday and today (1922); Locomotive engineering (1897) (No restrictions)
– Midland Railway Crampton Locomotive No 131 (1848) (Public domain)
– Alfred R. Waud – The Mississippi at New Orleans (1872) (Public domain)
– Fitzroy iron works, Mittagong, c. 1873 (Public domain)
– Edward Williams Clay – The times, panic 1837 (Public domain)
– New Jersey State Normal School at Montclair catalogue (1910) (No restrictions)
Some b-roll is AI-generated video (Google Veo) and is not real footage.
Narration: AI voice.
MUSIC
"Investigations" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
#ClintonRoad #CrossCastle #NewJerseyHistory #IronFurnace #GildedAge