Crystal Lake

Until the 1930s, Crystal Lake was a small body of water at the western end of Station Avenue in Haddon Heights, framed by North and South Park Avenues and giving Lake Street its name as its terminus. Created by the damming of Kings Run, which becomes the southern branch of Newton Creek, it marked the dividing line between Haddon and Centre Townships until Haddon Heights was formed from them in 1904. European settlement in the area began in 1682, when six Quaker families divided what was then Newton Township, and four early farmhouses remain in Haddon Heights: the Hinchman-Hurley-Lippincott House at 1089 North Park Drive, built c.1699; the Colonel Joseph Ellis House at 1009 Sycamore Street, built c.1710; the John Thorn Glover House at 1212 Sylvan Drive, built before 1750; and the Isaac Glove House at 1908 New Jersey Avenue, built c.1750. Crystal Lake was a popular place for swimming and ice skating, especially for youngsters, and many older residents remembered summer skinny-dipping, winter skating, and warming by bonfires near its banks. A tiny island with four swamp willow trees stood at the lake's center, shading summer picnics, while grassy banks and groves of mature native trees surrounded the water. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Kings Run supplied water to the Glover Fulling Milling pond downstream between the bridge at Glover Avenue and the Haddon Heights Dell. Crystal Lake also appeared as the backdrop in a photograph of the first car in Haddon Heights, a 1904 U.S. Long Distance Runabout owned by Mr. Luke Moore. In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration drained the lake and removed many of the trees, and much of the dry land became part of the Camden County Park system, while the lake's former outline can still be traced in the bowl-like terrain behind the War Memorial at the foot of the park.

Haddon Heights, New Jersey · United States