Cheap Land; Homes for the Homeless - The Wild Lands of N.J. ... Manchester, Ocean County ... (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 Excerpt: ... some thirty miles to railroad communication with the inhabited parts of the world. About the same time Benjamin Reid, Hightstown, a large peachgrower, wishing to extend his operations, and finding that the Raritan Bay road was likely to become an accomplished fact, went down to Tom's River and commenced buying up tracts of land, wherever ho could find them cheap, that is, $10 to $20 an acre, and at once put a large force to planting peach orchards. Some of these have given two valuable crops; and there is no telling to what extent Mr. Reid would have pushed the peach business in that section if death had not, unfortunately for his family and the whole country, intervened just in the height of his success. Ho had already contemplated the employment of a steamer to carry his fruit to market. Tins' is quite feasible, as it is only three or four miles down Tom's River and Bay, to Barnegat Bay, thence ten miles south to Barnegat Inlet, and the run to New York is easily made in one night, returning next day in time to take on another load. This is what will be done a few years hence, when the peach and other fruit business of Ocean County becomes so groat that the one single track railroad cannot carry all to freights. It will be a great advantage to tho business when the branch railroad, now nearly completed, is put in operation upon the eight miles between Manchester and Tom's River, cutting off that distance of heavy road for wagoning. Then the distance to haul peaches from several of the present large orchard swill be only one or two miles. This branch will also benefit the cranberry-growere. Cranberry Lands and Cranberry Culture in Ocean County. It is impossible to give even an approximate estimate of the quan-. tity of land suited to cranberry culture. I h...