I-80 Across New Jersey

Believe it or not, one of the most ecologically diverse states in the eastern United States is New Jersey.  The Garden State, while often reviled as a toxic waste dump fit only for the conducting of business related to organized crime, is actually the east in miniature:  lovely beaches, dunes, barrier islands, coastal pine forests, the mixed white pine forests of New England, and the Appalachians, complete with masses of rhododendrons, can all be found here.  As always, though I insist that the best way to discover a place is on foot or in a canoe, a drive across cutting across the state can get one a decent glimpse of the variety of landscapes that it has to offer.  Today we get to see what a trip across New Jersey on I-80 westbound is like. 

I-80 is the second longest interstate highway in the United States and was built to be the high-speed upgrade to the Lincoln Highway, the first road to stretch across the country.  Much of I-80 is actually quite dull in comparison to the other transcontinental routes; I-90 and I-70 pass through much more dramatic portions of the Rocky Mountains, I-40 heads on through the most scenic parts of several mountain ranges including the Great Smokies, and I-10 is very very fun, getting through the best of the swampy south and cactus land over in the southwest.  I-80 passes through, well, a lot of farmland.  This is not to say she is boring at all, passing through Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevadas and such, but the highlights are a bit more subtle in many places.  New Jersey, where the westward trek begins, is probably one such place.

If one enters I-80 from its glorious starting point on the George Washington Bridge, one is probably already very angry and frustrated from driving in some of the most annoying and dangerous traffic in the country.  The scenery is hardly spectacular either, as all around is an urban landscape that refuses to yield anything green for quite some time.  One tends to be more concerned with all the road signs telling the driver how to escape the NY metropolitan area.

Fuzzy driving pictures.  I should probably invest in one of those mounted dash cameras.  Even the steady hand of a passenger is no substitute for a mount.

This is not to say that things are boring around here.  This is one of the biggest urban areas in the world, after all, and within spitting distance and sometimes even visual range are historic landmarks like Paterson Great Falls.  This is about where the road climbs off the Atlantic coastal plain and into the foothills of the Appalachians, albeit very gradually.  The odd rock cut here and there is the only sign that this is happening.  In general, the first leg of the trip is very flat, and all of a sudden...

Very forested.  The trees are nothing unusual, and the whole affair is largely a hardwood event, sort of the northernmost extensions of the Piedmont.  The presence of both the city and the coast disappear almost with the passing of a few miles.  Then those rock cuts show up again.

With them comes the great Eastern White Pines which tell the traveler that the last bastion of the southeastern world must give way to the northeastern and Appalachian world.  

Then mile by mile, the rolling terrain gives way to a bit more relief.  If one travels in the winter, the relatively warmer temperatures of the lower country turns into something more befitting the northern states.  In many ways, by terrain, climate, and even developmental signs, the eastern interior knocks away the heart of the Thirteen Colonies and even in this day and age, the result is more wilderness than settlement.

This is not to say that the urban northeast is left behind, as the exit signs indicate.  People have settled and moved into every square inch here that they can.  Yet even these days the ridges of the eastern Appalachian front remain largely undesirable for development.  The Great Eastern Wall remains the first bastion of a still relatively wild continent.  The first true measure of this comes along in the sputtering remains of the Blue Ridge where it is intersected by the Delaware River in a place known as the Delaware Water Gap.  The great ridge comes up almost suddenly into view, albeit from a distance long enough to really get absorbed into the contrast of scale between here and the other side of the state.

The water gaps are places where rivers managed to cut their way through the parallel ridges of the eastern Appalachians.  They often allowed for early travelers to make their way past these walls further into the interior, even as they allow I-80 to do so today.  New Jersey comes to a glorious western end here at the river.  Next post we will take a closer look at this beautiful place.