The story of Batsto, an early iron town and glassworks at the heart of southern New Jersey's Pine Barrens, is unique in American history. From its modest beginnings as a sawmill in the 1760s, Batsto grew into a thriving industrial community through the Revolutionary War years and beyond, its fortunes rising and falling for two centuries as a succession of owners and speculators brought their visions and schemes to bear. Located along the Mullica and Batsto Rivers, Batsto's ironworks became...

The Pine Barrens of New Jersey contain more ghost towns, some say, than the entire American west. In Ghost Towns and Other Quirky Places in the New Jersey Pine Barrens author Barbara Solem-Stull tells the story of the towns that rose up around the iron furnaces, glass factories, paper mills, cranberry farms, and brick making establishments of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. A popular Pinelands speaker and tour guide, Solem-Stull has written much more than an armchair guide to the...