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The Maurice River Reaches Map is easy to interact with the simple controls and features provided.
Listed below are the key features and descriptions of how they can be utilized.

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The map is fully draggable. Simply click anywhere on the map and begin dragging your mouse to move the map to specific areas.
move up click to navigate the map "up".
move down click to navigate the map "down".
move left click to navigate the map "left".
move right click to navigate the map "right".
zoom in click to "zoom in" for a closer look.
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red buoy click to learn more about that reach.
Maurice River Recollections Project
River Reaches

The Maurice River Reaches Project
Lower Lorie's Hill
Reach #26

In his book, History of Port Elizabeth: W.F. Bowen wrote: "The first meadow embanked on the Maurice River was done by John Hoffman, and was a small lot situated on the north side of the Manumuskin River." (An interesting note says that the Manumuskin River was once called Menowskin.)

New Jersey Conservation Foundation’s Conservation Plan for the Manumuskin River Watershedcontains information that reveals the early history and the characteristics of this reach. One description reads: "The first loop of the Maurice River north of the mouth of the Manumuskin River is designated on the circa 1745 map as ‘Hoffman's Banked Meadow.’” 

The report described "earthen dikes five feet or more in height."  The banks enabled the farmer to plant crops in the fertile "blue mud" that edged the river. This rich, silty soil was much more suitable for raising hay, as compared to the sandy upland soil, according to this document.

"John Hoffman's embanked plot is believed to be the first reclaimed salt marsh on the Maurice River," the report noted. "This diked plot was farmed until 1936. At that time only 200 acres of meadowed farmland remained along the Maurice River between Muskee Creek and the Menantico River."

Local journalist Jean Jones’ research in the Manumuskin study,  (page 137) and the recollections of local resident Richard Weatherby put a Mr. Edward Key and a mud digger at banks of the meadows above Port Elizabeth.

Jones wrote that "above the Port Elizabeth bridge and on the bank that is north or west, depending on the various meanders, the meadow was said to be banked in the early 20th century." In her conversations with Herb Vanaman, Jones learned that Ed Key built those dikes for the farmers. It became costly to continue diking and the farms were gradually abandoned.

Weatherby said that in his recollection, Key left his equipment at this section of the river that some call Lower Lore. "This is Manumuskin Creek," Weatherby said, "and that boiler from that steam engine sat right here. It was part of the old mud digger that sat right here. Right up on the mouth of the Manumuskin. We called it the Boiler Reach and the Boudelier Meadow."

Weatherby said that he and his family trapped and fished from around Spring Garden Reach down to the Boiler Reach. (He located Boiler Reach on the Maurice River at the mouth of the Manumuskin).

"It was called that because there was a big muddigger," Weatherby explained, adding that it was used to keep the dikes in at one time.  "I am sure that that muddigger belonged to Key - and that is where that muddigger was left. Reeves called it the Lower Lore's. Someone else called it the Fralinger Farm," Weatherby said, "but the Fralingers didn’t own it till way after the Boudeliers."



Narratives