Paulins Kill: Difference between revisions

Paulins Kill
Physical characteristics
Mouth	Delaware River
Length	28.60 miles (46.027 km)

The Paulins Kill (also known as Paulinskill or Paulinskill River) is a 28.6-mile long tributary of the Delaware River in northwestern New Jersey in the United States.

Geography and Geology

The river's course

The river emanates from two branches, both of which merge near the hamlet of Augusta, in Frankford Township, New Jersey. One branch, known as the Culver Brook (often marked on maps simply as a "Branch of the Paulins Kill") begins at Culver's Lake, in Frankford Township and flows through Branchville. The other begins in marshes north of Newton, New Jersey and flows through Lafayette Township, New Jersey before merging with the Culver Brook in neighboring Frankford Township. Although often unnamed on maps, this latter branch is often considered the main branch of the river.

The Paulins Kill then flows southwest, through Hampton and Stillwater Townships in Sussex County, before flowing through Frelinghuysen, Hardwick, Blairstown and Knowlton Townships in Warren County where its waters enter the Delaware River just south of the Delaware Water Gap at the hamlet of Columbia in Knowlton Township.

A dam was built in the 1920s across the Paulins Kill in Stillwater Township, to create Paulinskill Lake, a narrow, 3-mile (4.8 km) long body of water that stretches back into Hampton Township to the north. It was constructed in response to the 1914 establishment of Swartswood State Park, to provide seasonal (summer) housing and recreation for vacationers from the New York metropolitan area. Today, it is a year-round residential community managed by a homeowners association.

Today, several dams and mill races remain from the grist, saw, oil and fulling mills built along the river's banks during the 18th and 19th century, and continue to alter the course and flow of the river.

The Paulins Kill Valley

The valley of the Paulins Kill is bordered on the West by the Kittatinny Ridge of the Appalachians. Kittatinny Mountain, which is a segment of the Blue Ridge chain of the Appalachians, has been known historically as Schawangunk Mountain (as it is known north of the New York-New Jersey border), or Pahaqualong Mountain.

Beginning at the western boundary of the valley of the Paulinskill and extending westward to the Delaware River (and beyond that to the Allegheny Mountains), is the Ridge and Valley physiographic province, one of four physiographic provinces that cover the land mass of New Jersey. This area, was largely formed through the fold-and-thrust action about 300 million years ago during the Alleghenian orogeny. Largely, the valley floor, and its eastern boundary constitute the northwesternmost reaches of the New York-New Jersey Highlands region—a geological formation composed primarily of precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock—within New Jersey.

The Paulins Kill shares the valley with Papakating Creek which flows to northward to the Wallkill River, and is part of the Hudson River watershed. This valley has often been called, historically, "Mamakating" which derives from the Lenape for "valley of the divided waters"—however, this name has fallen into disuse since the latter half of the 20th century. At their closest, the Papakating Creek and Paulins Kill flow within one mile of each other, in Frankford Township in Sussex County.

Tributaries

The Paulins Kill, itself a tributary of the Delaware River, is fed by several mountain streams—many of which are unnamed. However, several larger streams—with names—contribute their waters to the Paulinskill at various points along its 28.6 mile length, including:

• Blair Creek (Blairstown)
• Culver Brook (Frankford) - this is the western branch of the Paulins Kill.
• Dilts Creek (Blairstown)
• Jacksonburg Creek (Stillwater, Hardwick, and Blairstown)
• Trout Brook (Stillwater)
• Walnut Creek (Blairstown)
• Yards Creek (Knowlton and Blairstown)

History

Origins of the name

A vintage postcard view of the Paulins Kill at Baleville, in Hampton Township, New Jersey, circa 1905. The Paulins Kill is a calm, slow-flowing river, without significant disturbance or rapids, and looks much like this view for all of its length.

The Board of Geographic Names decided that the official spelling of the name would be Paulins Kill in 1898. Other spellings (Pawlins Kill or Paulinskill) have remained in common use. The use of Paulinskill River, however—while often used—is redundant as Kill is a geographic designation for a small stream or creek, derived from Dutch.

The Paulins Kill was originally known as the Tockhockonetcong by the local Native Americans who were either Munsee, or Lenni Lenape. The name Tockhockonetcong (or Tockhockonetcunk) roughly translates to "stream that comes from Tok-Hok-Nok"—Tok-hok-nok being an indian village believed to been within the boundaries of present-day Newton, New Jersey, near which one branch of the Paulinskill begins, and the Lenape roots hannek meaning "stream" and the suffix -ong denoting "place."

Local tradition says that the Paulins Kill got its name from Pauline, the daughter of a Hessian soldier. During the American Revolution, Hessian soldiers captured at the Battle of Trenton and other skirmishes within New Jersey were held in custody in the Stillwater, New Jersey area. Several of these Hessians are alleged to have deserted the British and taken up residence in the Stillwater area because of the village's predominantly German emigrant population. The assumption is that the name Paulins Kill was derived from "Pauline's Kill." However, the fact that the name Paulins Kill is present on maps and surveys dating from the 1740s and 1750s—two and three decades before the Revolution—negates the veracity of this tradition. Further, some local sources go so far as to state that the girl's name was Pauline Snover, however extant genealogical records do not indicate that any person existed by that name at that time.

Two other possibilities for the naming of the Paulins Kill are more likely. First, that the wife of Stillwater, New Jersey's first settler, Johan Peter Bernhardt (died 1748), was named Maria Paulina and that she had died prior to the first settlement at Stillwater in 1742. However, very few records are extant detailing Bernhardt's family.

The second and most likely etymological origin is that the Native American name given to the mountain on the valley's western flank, Pahaqualong (also spelled Pahaqualin, Pohoqualin and Pahaquarra) may have been corrupted and anglicized to a spelling such as "Paulins" by early white settlers or surveyors. Pahaqualong is roughly translated as “end of two mountains with stream between” as a combination of the words pe’uck meaning “water hole,” qua meaning “boundary,” and the suffix -onk meaning “place.” This translation my refer either to the valley of the Paulins Kill itself, or to the Delaware Water Gap.

Local tradition does place an Indian village named Pahaquarra near the mouth of the Paulinskill. Pahaquarry Township in Warren County derives its name from this origin.

A village named Paulina located a short distance east of Blairstown, New Jersey on Route 94, is said to have been named "from the stream upon which it is located." William Armstrong, a local settler, built the first grist mill there along the river in 1768.

Early settlement

The first human settlement along the Paulins Kill was by early native Americans circa 8,000 BC. At the time of the first settlement by emigrating Europeans in this region, it was populated by the Munsee tribe of the Lenni Lenape (or Delaware) Indians. Artifacts (often of stone, clay or bone) of the Native American culture are often found in nearby farm fields and at the site of their ancient villages.

Typically, early European settlement along the Paulins Kill was achieved by Palatine Germans who had emigrated to the New World by way of the port of Philadelphia from 1720 to 1800. Many had treked north, up the valley of the Delaware and settled along the Musconetcong, Pequest and Paulins Kill valleys in New Jersey and along the Lehigh River valley in Pennsylvania. Many of the areas along the Paulins Kill were not settled until the 1740s and 1750s. Often villages established and settled by German emigrants remained culturally German well into the Nineteenth Century, with German Lutheran and Reformed churches (often as "Union" churches) established shortly after the first settlements (as was the case in Knowlton and in Stillwater). However, by the early Nineteenth Century, many descendants of these German settlers removed to newly-opened lands in the West (i.e. Ohio, the Northwest Territory, the Southern Tier of New York) and those that remained had assimilated into English-speaking culture, and the German Reformed or Lutheran Churches often became Presbyterian.

English, Scottish, Welsh settlers located in the Paulins Kill valley throughout the latter-half of the eighteenth century, often travelling north from Philadelphia, or west from Long Island, Newark, and Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth).

The area around present-day Stillwater was first settled by the family of Casper Shafer (1712–1784), a Palatine German who had emigrated to Philadelphia a few years earlier. Shafer, with his father-in-law, Johan Peter Bernhardt (?–1748), and his brother-in-law Johann Georg Windemuth (or John George Wintermute) (1711–1782), settled at Stillwater in 1742. Both Shafer and Windemuth were married to Bernhardt's daughters. Shafer, who operated a grist mill at Stillwater starting in 1746, used to take flour, fruit, and other products by flatboat down the Paulins Kill and the Delaware River to the market in Philadelphia. Most of the New Jersey shoreline and cities such as Elizabethtown and Newark were practically unknown to the German settlers along the Paulins Kill who learned of the existence of these cities only through the Lenni Lenape.

Part of this was because of the incredible hardship of an overland journey east to these cities resulting from a lack of roads. The first road connecting Elizabethtown, and Morristown with the Delaware River, was the Military Road built by Jonathan Hampton (1711-1777) in 1755-1756. Very few large roads were built until the creation of turnpike companies in the early decades of the Nineteenth Century. Trade, during much of the mid-eigthteenth century in the northwestern reaches of New Jersey was conducted through Philadelphia.

About the year 1760, Mark Thomson (1739-1803) settled in Hardwick Township (now Frelinghuysen Township) and erected a gristmill and sawmill on the Paulins Kill. The settlement that arose was later named Marksboro in his honour. Thomson, who removed to Changewater in Hunterdon County later went on to be an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, and serve two terms in the House of Represenatives.

Industry

From the standpoint of conservation, the Paulins Kill has benefitted from it having remained chiefly a pastoral river in a largely undeveloped area of New Jersey. No significant industry had developed since the 1740s to cause irreversible damage to the flow of the river or to heavily pollute its waters. During this time, the river was dammed to provide power to the only industries established in these small rural towns: grist, saw, oil, and fulling mills.

Columbia, a hamlet near the mouth of the Paulins Kill in Knowlton Township, was known for a large glass manufacturing factory.

Many of the dams that once powered the mills, and the electrical power plant at Branchville established in 1903, have been breached, or no longer impede the flow fo the river.

Today

Today, the Paulins Kill continues to maintain its rural character through both local concern and government policy. It is an excellent area for birdwatching, canoeing, hiking, hunting and fishing, and is considered to be one of the best trout streams in New Jersey. As in the past, the Paulins Kill Valley remains rural, and the landscape is dotted with many horse and dairy farms along its entire length.

New Jersey's Green Acres program has targeted the Paulins Kill and its surrounding valley as an excellent natural resources for open space and farmland preservation and recreational opportunities. The state, working together with agricultural development boards in Sussex and Warren County, and with the Ridge and Valley Conservancy, a local nonprofit land trust, share land acquisition costs to enter tracts of real estate into the program.

The Paulinskill Valley Trail—a network of trails along abandoned railroad beds of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad—have been transformed and maintained for hiking, horseback riding, and other recreational uses, stretches for 27 miles from Sparta Junction in Sussex County to Columbia in Warren County, roughly following the entire length of the river. After the New York, Susquehanna and Western decomissioned the route in 1962, the right-of-way along this corridor was purchased by the City of Newark in the following year. Newark hoped to use the bed for a water pipeline connecting to the proposed dam and reservoir project on the Delaware River. However, this project—controversial from the start because of environmental concerns and the federal government's abuse of eminent domain—was cancelled during the 1970s. Newark sold their claim to the corridor in 1992 to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for $600,000, and the Paulinskill Valley Trail was created.

Flora and fauna

Birds

Turkey Vulture Cathartes aura Red-tailed Hawk Buteo jamaicensis Ring-necked Pheasant Phasianus colchicus Eastern Wild Turkey Meleagris gallopavo Killdeer Charadrius vociferus Mourning Dove Zenaida macroura Purple martin Progne subis Common Barn Owl Tyto alba Eastern Screech Owl Otus asio Great Horned Owl Bubo virginianus Snowy Owl Nyctea scandiaca Barred Owl Strix varia Long-eared Owl Asio otus Short-eared Owl Asio flammeus Northern Saw-whet Owl Aegolius acadicus American Robin Turdus migratorius Red-headed Woodpecker Melanerpes erythrocephalus Red-bellied Woodpecker Melanerpes carolinus Yellow-bellied Sapsucker Sphyrapicus varius Downy Woodpecker Picoides pubescens Hairy Woodpecker Picoides villosus Northern Flicker Colaptes auratus Pileated Woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica S bm Blue Jay Cyanocitta cristata D bmw American Crow Corvus brachyrhynchos Black-capped Chickadee Paurs atricapillus Scarlet Tanager Piranga olivacea RP bm Northern Cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis Indigo Bunting Passerina cyanea Field Sparrow Spizella pusilla Lark Sparrow Chondestes grammacus Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus American Goldfinch Carduelis tristis INC bmw House Sparrow Passer domesticus Common Grackle Quiscalus quiscula D bmw Brown-headed Cowbird Molothrus ater Baltimore Oriole Icterus galbula RP bm Purple Finch Carpodacus purpureus RP bmw House Finch Carpodacus mexicanus Mute Swan Cygnus olor Canada Goose Branta canadensis INC bmw Wood Duck Aix sponsa American Black Duck Anas rubripes RP bmw Mallard Anas platyrhynchos

Mammals

The Paulins Kill is also home to a variety of mammals, many of which are hunted during the winter months, including: Opossum (Didelphis marsupialis) Eastern Cottontail Rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus), Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus), Woodchuck or Groundhog (Marmota monax), Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), Red Squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus), Beaver (Castor candensis), Muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus), Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum), Eastern Coyote (Canis latrans), Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes), Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), Black Bear (Ursus americanus), Raccoon (Procyon lotor), Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis), River Otter (Lutra canadensis), Bobcat (Felis rufus), White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus).

Reptiles and amphibians

The Paulins Kill valley is home to many common northeastern American reptiles, including snakes such as the American Copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix), the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus), the Northern Water Snake (Nerodia sipedon), the Common Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) and the Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum), and turtles including the Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina), and the Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina).

It is also home to a wide variety of amphibians including the Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum), Red-Spotted Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens viridescens), American Toad (Bufo americanus), Fowler’s Toad (Bufo woodhousii fowleri), American Bull Frog (Rana catesbeiana) and many others.

Fish and marine life

The Paulins Kill is a popular fishing destination for various species of trout—mostly Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) Brown Trout (Salmo trutta) and Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis)—many of which are stocked each year during fishing season by New Jersey's Division of Fish & Wildlife and others are found wild.

Historically, the Paulins Kill was known to be populated with American Shad (Alosa sapidissima), but with the construction of mill dams across the river in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the population of Shad were unable to spawn in the river. Shad can still be found in the Delaware River.

The river is also a breeding ground for Dwarf wedgemussel (Alasmidonta heterodon), an endangered species.

Insects

The Paulins Kill owes its fly fishing reputation to the prolific populations of various species of the mayfly (order Ephemeroptera) and caddisfly (order Trichoptera).

Trees and Plants

White Oak (Quercus alba), Black Oak (Quercus velutina), Buttonwood or American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis), Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana), Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), American Chestnut (Castanea dentata), Black Walnut (Juglans nigra), Tamarack (Larix laricina), and various species of Maple (genus Acer),Birch (genus Betula), Hickory (genus Carya), Elm (genus Ulmus), Spruce (genus Picea), Pine (genus Pinus), and Crab Apple (genus Malus).

Native wild grape vines (especially Vitis riparia), and Blackberry bushes (Rubus fruticosus) are often found.

Several farms and orchards are located along the banks of the Paulins Kill, raising crops included grain-producing grasses including alfalfa, wheat, corn, hay and historically barley, buckwheat and rye; fruit trees harvesting many varieties of cherries (Prunus cerasus), apple (Malus domestica), plum (Prunus domestica), peach (Prunus persica) and pear (genus Pyrus).

See also

• Geography of New Jersey
• History of New Jersey
• List of New Jersey rivers
• New Jersey
• Paulinskill Viaduct
• Sussex County, New Jersey
• Swartswood State Park
• Warren County, New Jersey

Resources and external links

Books and printed materials

• Cawley, James S. and Cawley, Margaret. Exploring the Little Rivers of New Jersey (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1942, 1961, 1971, 1993). ISBN 0813506840
• Gleason, June Benore. Historical Paulinskill Valley, New Jersey: Blairstown's neighbors. (Blairstown, New Jersey: Blairstown Press, 1949).
• Honeyman, A. Van Doren (ed.). Northwestern New Jersey--A History of Somerset, Morris, Hunterdon, Warren, and Sussex Counties Volume 1. (Lewis Historical Publishing Co., New York, 1927). NO ISBN
• Schaeffer, Casper M.D. (and Johnson, William M.). Memoirs and Reminiscences: Together with Sketches of the Early History of Sussex County, New Jersey. (Hackensack, New Jersey: Privately Printed, 1907). NO ISBN
• Snell, James P. History of Sussex and Warren Counties, New Jersey, With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. (Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1881). NO ISBN
• Thieme, Christopher D., On Crossroads and Signposts: An Etymology of Place Names in Sussex and Warren Counties, New Jersey. (New York: Newcastle Press, 2006). ISBN Pending

External links

• Ridge and Valley Conservancy
• Paulinskill Valley Trail Committee
• Map of The Paulinskill
• U.S. Geological Survey: NJ stream flow-gauging stations