1988 Conservation Plan-Manumuskin River Wastershed

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SCENIC RESOURCES As might be expected simply from its largely undeveloped character, the Manumuskin drainage basin is a beautiful place. As one proceeds through the landscape heading from south to north, a meandering tidal river gives way to a densely forested freshwater stream, interrupted in several places by small mill ponds. Farms and orchards mark the uppermost extent of the basin, and small villages are interspersed throughout it. The tidal portion of the river is one of the most lovely canoeing streams in southern New Jersey. The river winds through an open brackish water wetlands teeming with wildflowers throughout the summer months. A dense stand of Pickerel weed, Pontedaria cordata, gives the wetlands a blue coloration, accented by the intense scarlet of the Cardinal Flower, Lobelia cardenalis, and the large pink and white blossoms of the Rose Mallow, Hibiscus palustris. Skirting the edge of the wetlands are White Cedar and Pitch Pine trees which lend their somber dark green to the scenery year-round. The uplands rise rather sharply from this floodplain, affording a wide view out over the river. The upland forest is oak and pine. Fallen trees covered with moss litter the forest floor, and in the autumn wildflowers and mushrooms line a trail that parallels the east bank of the river. The red brick Port Elizabeth Methodist Church and cemetary overlook the Wildrice wetlands through which thousands of waterfowl, rail birds and bobolink stream in their annual migration south. Near the old church is a white one-room schoolhouse with a cupola, and further north scrubby thickets in a grassy field mark the site of the earliest glassworks established in the Pinelands. Children find arrowheads on the baseball diamond. Probably half of the homes in Port Elizabeth are more than a century old. At the head of tide one-half mile north of the railroad bridge, there is a fast land on the west side of the river where a canoe can be pulled out and a picnic enjoyed. In the surrounding area crumbling wooden cabins with ironstone fireplaces, the foundations and raceway of an old gristmill, and an abandoned cedar-shingle and clapboard stagecoach tavern are found along trails crisscrossed by the ridges of tunneling rodents. Fence lizards scurry in the underbrush, bird feathers and owl pellets lie beneath trees, and Hognose Snakes fake death if surprised while sunning in the trail path. Two miles further north, Cumberland Pond spreads over 29 acres, assuming the color of the skies above it, fringed by pines. The ruins of a long abandoned bog iron forge and furnace--one of 30 such early industrial complexes in the Pinelands路--lie in the ground nearby, and the


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