High Bridge and the Railroad

The Columbia Trail follows the former 7-mile High Bridge Branch in Hunterdon County, running from the Borough of High Bridge north to the Morris County line. Opened in July 1876 and owned by the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey, the line carried 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. Trains also handled milk, lumber, ice blocks from Lake Hopatcong, U.W. Mail, quarry stone, coal, agricultural products, blasting supplies, sand, and general merchandise, while also transporting passengers, including schoolchildren traveling to High Bridge and Dover. Passenger service ran from 1876 through March 31, 1932, with two daily round trips and about 89,000 riders annually at its peak. Railroads transformed towns by linking them to distant markets and travel beyond the short distances most people had previously known. In New Jersey, railroading began in 1834 with the Camden and Amboy Rail Road and Transportation Company, followed two years later by the Elizabethtown and Somerville Rail Road; after its purchase by the Somerville and Easton Rail Road in 1849, the merged line became the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey. When that railroad reached High Bridge, it faced the obstacle of crossing the South Branch of the Raritan River and its broad valley, solved in 1852 by a 1,300-foot-long, 100-foot-high bridge of eight stone piers supporting a wooden trestle that gave the town its name. Because steam locomotives could ignite wooden bridges with falling ashes, the railroad began in 1859 to replace this trestle with a stone arch, earthen-filled structure, completing it six years later at a cost of $72,252.50; part of the valley was filled, and the remaining span became the two-track stone arch bridge that still stands, with one arch over Arch Street and the other over the river. The High Bridge Branch became extremely profitable from shipments of iron ore, pig iron, coal, and other hard minerals, carrying more than half of the state's iron ore production, and by 1881 more than 25,000 tons of iron ore moved each month, with some days requiring several trains to haul nearly 120 freight cars. As cheaper iron ore was discovered elsewhere in the late 1800s, traffic declined and mines closed. The last train ran on March 31, 1976, exactly forty-four years after the final passenger train, and the tracks were removed four years later. The segment from Bartley to Wharton remains active, while most of the abandoned right-of-way was acquired by the Elizabethtown and Columbia Gas companies for pipelines, with surface rights transferred to Hunterdon and Morris Counties for recreational trail use as the Columbia Trail.

High Bridge, New Jersey · United States