Opened in July 1876, the High Bridge Branch was a busy railroad of the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, built to carry iron ore from mines in Chester, Hacklebarney, Mine Hill, Port Oram (Wharton), and Hibernia to the Taylor Iron Works in High Bridge and to foundries and steel mills along the main line toward the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania region. Its trains also carried milk, lumber, ice blocks from Lake Hopatcong, U.S. Mail, quarry stone, coal, agricultural products, especially peaches, blasting supplies, sand, general merchandise, passengers traveling between towns along the line, and children going to schools in High Bridge and Dover. Passenger service ran from 1876 through March 31, 1932, with two daily round trips and about 89,000 riders each year at its peak. The last train ran on March 31, 1976, exactly forty-four years after the last passenger train, and the tracks were removed four years later, although the railroad from Bartley to Wharton remains active serving local businesses. After most of the line was abandoned, the Elizabethtown and Columbia Gas companies bought the right-of-way, installed pipelines, and transferred surface rights to Hunterdon and Morris Counties for a recreational trail now called the Columbia Trail. Railroads transformed New Jersey towns by connecting them to distant markets and services, and the state’s rail age began in 1834 with the Camden & Amboy Rail Road and Transportation Company between South Amboy and Camden, followed two years later by the Elizabethtown and Somerville Rail Road. After that line was bought by the Somerville & Easton Rail Road in 1849, the merged company became the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, whose profitable shipments of iron ore, pig iron, coal, and other hard minerals carried more than half the state’s iron ore; by 1881 it moved more than 25,000 tons of iron ore each month, and some days several trains were needed to haul nearly 120 freight cars. As cheaper iron ore was found elsewhere in the late 1800s, iron traffic declined and mines closed. This area, settled in 1800 by Nathan Vernoy and known as Vernoy, did not produce iron ore but depended on limestone and fertilizer made by burning it. When the railroad arrived, a spur was built to the quarry, which at its height employed about 50 men. Some present homes were built by people employed by the quarry or the railroad, and by the end of the 19th century larger kilns were owned and managed by prominent local families including Weise, Neighbor, and Wack. As demand for limestone declined, the Weise family sold the quarry to the Bound Brook Crushed Stone Company, which continued operations for several decades.