Legends of the Pines

Back in the early 1800s,smugglers used the Mullica River estuary to offload cargo both to avoid tariff duties on imports and to unload pirated contraband.The New Jersey coastline was ideally located south of New York Harbor,Long Island,New England ports,Canadian ports,and vessels coasting south.Philadelphia commerce ships coasted north.The smugglers had the interior of the tidal N.J. rivers to themselves.Devoid of all but tiny settlements,the pine barrens were a place to both hide goods and secretly transport by wagons north to New York or west to Philadelphia.Legend has it of smugglers gold buried and hopelessly lost in the mostly ,to this day ,trackless woods.A spirit of hostility and mistrust of outsiders pervades the area today.