Old-House Journal
By Miriam Ascarelli
New Jersey: Revolution and Revelation

It’s easy to dismiss northeast New Jersey as the great asphalt wasteland between New York and Philadelphia. But the region is more than just billowing smokestacks, toxic waste dumps and a string of uninspiring turnpike exits. After all, this is where Arts & Crafts pioneer Gustav Stickley spent some of his most productive years. The area nurtured inventor Thomas Edison and helped set the course of both the American and Industrial Revolutions.

New Jersey has a split personality, home to urban factories that churned out locomotives, glass and steel to propel the industrialization of America, but also to farmers who helped it become the Garden State. Its northeast is especially full of history, but has been too long obscured by New York City’s long shadow. Get in your car, mind your turnpike exits and cruise down the highway for a peek at the underpinnings of America.

New Jersey saw plenty of action during Revolutionary War battles to control the key ports of New York and Philadelphia. George Washington spent more than a quarter of the war on New Jersey soil, setting up winter headquarters, twice in Morristown and once in Somerville. New Jersey militiamen, at first ambivalent in their support of the Continental Army, eventually helped tip the balance in Washington’s favor.

For an overview of the state’s role, begin at Morristown National Historical Park, about 30 miles west of the Big Apple. It’s the site of the Ford Mansion, the hip-roofed Georgian-style home of Col. Jacob Ford Jr. that served as Washington’s headquarters in the winter of 1779-80. His troops shivered through the bitterly cold season at Jockey Hollow, 600 wooded acres also within the park. Here you can see the Tempe Wick House, where another general billeted that winter, and log huts built by the Jersey Brigade in the week prior to Christmas 1779…