Business & Economics

The Morris Canal was not the longest canal in the world, but it did have one superlative to its credit—it climbed higher than any other canal ever built.

In its time, it was world famous, visited by tourists and technical people from as far away as Europe and Asia.For nearly 100 years, it crossed the hills of northern New Jersey, accomplishing that feat with 23 lift locks and 23 inclined planes.From Lake Hopatcong, the canal ran westward through the Musconetcong valley to Phillipsburg, on the Delaware River, and eastward through the valleys of the Rockaway and Passaic Rivers to tidewater at Newark and Jersey City—a little over 100 miles horizontally and a total rise and fall of nearly 1,700 feet vertically.The Morris Canal, once an important soldier in the American Industrial Revolution, has been gone for most of the 20th century, but its memory lives on in the many photographs, postcards, and other memorabilia that its unique presence inspired.

Campbell soup is as American as apple pie and the Fourth of July. Cans of tomato, chicken noodle, and cream of mushroom soup, sporting the company's distinctive red-and-white labels have found places on millions of dinner tables around the globe. In 1869, fruit merchant Joseph Campbell and icebox manufacturer Abraham Anderson formed the Joseph A. Campbell Preserve Company, purveyors of canned tomatoes, vegetables, jellies, soups, condiments, and mincemeat. In 1897, general manager Arthur Dorrance decided to hire his twenty-four-year-old nephew, John T. Dorrance. It was on John Dorrance's ingenious invention of condensed soup in 1897 that the company's fortunes grew and expanded far beyond its Camden, New Jersey headquarters. Campbell Soup Company opens the company's archives with a wonderful assortment of photographs. Among the images are those of aproned workers dicing carrots and of white-hatted chefs stirring vats of boiling soups. Also pictured is the factory where America's original comfort food was conceived. In these pages, readers will learn the history behind the iconic red-and-white cans touted by such celebrities as Ronald Reagan, George Burns, Gracie Allen, and Johnny Carson. Today, in addition to soup, the company produces such well-known brands as Pepperidge Farm, Franco-American, V8, Prego, and Godiva. Campbell Soup Company traces the history of a small, southern New Jersey canning concern that made its products staples of American living.

This is the history of the supermarket where America grew up shopping, from the Hartford family's legacy to the generations of shoppers who depended on A&P for fair prices and quality food.

In 1859, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, known everywhere as A&P, began as a mail-order business located at 31 Vesey Street in downtown Manhattan. In 1925, A&P operated more than thirteen thousand grocery stores nationwide, with more than forty thousand employees. By 1950, approximately ten cents out of every dollar spent on food in the United States passed over A&P counters. A&P: The Story of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company tells the story of how cofounder George Huntington Hartford and his sons John and George brought A&P to a popularity with consumers that few companies have ever achieved. This stunning collection of vintage photographs shows such nostalgic scenes as the elegant early stores, their gleaming window displays, and the red horse-drawn delivery wagons with the A&P logo emblazoned on their sides. Shoppers choose from rows of colorful merchandise and fresh produce; uniformed storekeepers make change from ornate registers; and the founder's son tastes A&P's Eight O'Clock coffee. A&P is still an industry leader, and A&P: The Story of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company shows why.

For almost one hundred years, generations of New Jersey customers flocked to Bamberger's. From its grand Newark flagship to numerous suburban locations, the store was hailed for its myriad quality merchandise and its dedicated staff. Its promotional events were the highlight of every season, from the Thanksgiving Parade to elaborate Christmas festivals featuring celebrities such as Bob Hope, Carol Channing and Jerry Lewis. Though the once mighty flagship closed in 1992, Bamberger's is still fondly remembered as a retail haven. With vintage photographs, interviews with store insiders and favorite recipes, nationally renowned department store historian and New Jersey native Michael J. Lisicky brings the story of New Jersey's Greatest Store back to life.

This volume is the first pictorial history of this remarkably preserved rural enclave in Gloucester County. Established in 1844, the municipality originally included present-day Harrison and South Harrison Townships and the western edge of Elk Township. Swedes, Finns, and Quakers began settling here in the early 18th century, establishing farms and businesses along Raccoon and Oldmans Creeks and ancient Native American trails. This collection of images, principally drawn from the archives of the Harrison Township Historical Society, reveals how geography, natural resources, and proximity to nearby Philadelphia resulted in a prosperous farming community. Rare photographs of Mullica Hill's historic district, well known for its charming shops and well-preserved streetscape, and the area's other villages and farmlands reveal a place that honors traditions amidst change and transition.

Prior to 1870, the main routes of commerce entering Swedesboro were Kings Highway by land or Raccoon Creek by water.

When the Swedesboro Railroad was completed in October 1869, it started a new era of growth in the Swedesboro-Woolwich area. Produce was loaded on railcars for distant markets.Warehouses and industry exploded adjacent to the rail yard. New banks, hotels, and businesses crowded along both sides of Main Street. Economic expansion brought more residents and new housing construction. The prosperity of the Swedesboro area from 1870 to 1950 is preserved in detail on postcards and in photographs reprinted on these pages.

Lois M. Stanley is a retired high school English teacher and longtime Swedesboro resident. Russell C. Shiveler Jr. grew up in Woolwich Township and is a farm boy at heart. Both coauthored an earlier work published by Arcadia Publishing entitled Images of America: Swedesboro and Woolwich Township. This book is produced with the cooperation of the Swedesboro-Woolwich Historical Society.

Many Americans are familiar with Thomas Edison's invention factory in Menlo Park, where he patented the phonograph, the light bulb and more than one thousand other items. Yet many other ideas have grown in the Garden State, too.

New Jerseyans brought sound and music to movies and built the very first drive-in theater. In addition to the first cultivated blueberry, tasty treats like ice cream cones and M&Ms are also Jersey natives. Iconic aspects of American life, like the batting cage, catcher's mask and even professional baseball itself, started in New Jersey. Life would be a lot harder without the vacuum cleaner, plastic and Band-Aids, and many important advances in medicine and surgery were also developed here. Join author Linda Barth as she explores groundbreaking, useful, fun and even silly inventions and their New Jersey roots.

Given that Ridgewood lies within 20 miles of Lower Manhattan, it would be easy to dismiss this little town as another New York suburb. Settled by Johannes Van Emburgh in 1700, this slice of New Jersey was a pivotal safe haven for the founding fathers, such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr. In 1894, the State of New Jersey incorporated the area as a village, and what followed were 100 years of business and leisure with places like Woolworth's, the Erie Railroad Company, and First National Bank dominating the landscape. Today, Ridgewood serves as a home for those who wish to evade the city life of the boroughs. With its distinct mix of history and comfort, Ridgewood is unique in comparison to other towns in New Jersey and a fine place to call home.

In 1865, industrialist/inventor Hezekiah Bradley Smith purchased Shreveville, later renamed Smithville, an abandoned textile mill and town located along the Rancocas Creek in Burlington County, for $20,000.

He moved many workers from his Lowell, Massachusetts, plant to the new location, rebuilt the factory, and prepared it for the manufacture of his patented iron woodworking machinery. Smith began to improve the aging housing in the surrounding village. He opened a school and, later, constructed a new school building. Smith erected a boardinghouse for factory workers that contained shops and a concert hall. Through farming on land adjacent to his mansion, he made fresh produce and milk available to his workers. Smith’s company also expanded into new industries by working with outside inventors, like George Washington Pressey, who needed a manufacturer for his American Star Bicycle. Later, Arthur Hotchkiss contacted the company to build the world’s first bicycle railroad to transport workers from Mount Holly to the Smithville factory. This book captures life in the village and factory, memorializing the intertwining lives of the Smithville workers and H.B. Smith through photographs.

Although a relatively peaceful suburb today, Woodbridge is anything but a placid place to hang your hat. Hero Natty Fitz Randolph became enshrined in local lore for his daring attacks on the British during the Revolutionary War. Rich clay deposits sparked the city’s industrial revolution, bringing fortune and soaring architecture to the area. And the death-defying 1951 escape from a sinking freighter by Danish immigrant Captain Henrik Kurt Carlsen earned him commendations from both President Harry S. Truman and King Frederick IX of Denmark. Award-winning writer Phill Provance surveys Woodbridge through more than three hundred years of history.

North Jersey residents have enjoyed frothy pints since the first brewhouse opened in Hoboken in 1641. Brewing was big in the Garden State prior to Prohibition, and by 1900, more than fifty breweries were in operation. Nearly half of them—like Krueger—were located in Newark. The dry reign of Prohibition and the region's proximity to major cities made it a hub for bootleggers and gangsters like Longy Zwillman and Waxey Gordon. Even after the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed, North Jersey brewing sputtered. Some independent breweries like Ballantine restarted operation, but it wasn't until the 1990s that the region saw a craft brewing renaissance. Today, Jerseyans enjoy premium ales and lagers from breweries like Climax, River Horse and New Jersey Beer Company. Beer writer Chris Morris explores the origins and the new revolution of brewing in North Jersey.

Soon after Philadelphia began to exploit New Jersey's largest hematite deposit in 1758, Andover Furnace and Forge began producing the best metal in the world. Its product was so desirable that the newly formed American military wrested control from Loyalist owners in 1778. This frontier industrial outpost endured thirty-five years before labor costs, competition from cheap imports, careless consumption of woodlands and difficulty in transporting its products finally extinguished its fires. Today, repurposed eighteenth-century stone mills and mansions at Andover and Waterloo testify to the combination of rich ore, abundant water power and seemingly endless forests that long ago attracted teamsters, woodcutters, charcoal burners, miners, molders and smelters to the Appalachian Highlands of New Jersey. Local expert Kevin Wright tells the hidden story of the facets and personalities that once made Andover iron so widely coveted.

New Jersey, the fifth-largest wine-producing state in the country, has been making wine since 1864. While perhaps not as well known as other wine-producing states, New Jersey is home to many premier varieties. Award-winning chardonnay, syrah, marechal foch, viognier, traminette, merlot, cabernet, and dozens of others are produced in the state. Particularly unique to New Jersey wineries is an array of fruit wines, such as raspberry, cherry, and blueberry, which are exported all over the world. Because of the climate and conditions of the state, New Jersey wines are most often compared by viticulturists and enologists to the wines of France and Italy. From Cape May County up to the northernmost tip of Sussex County, New Jersey wineries offer more than 200 varieties of wine.

In 1662, two men and their families settled along the banks of Overpeck Creek. At this location, the township of Ridgefield would be established and later become the beloved borough of Ridgefield. Historically, the settlement of Ridgefield began as a modest subdivision within the English Neighborhood that spanned an area of 10 square miles, centrally located between the Hudson River and Hackensack River. This valley, with its unique location and close proximity to New York City, intrigued many people. This caused substantial real estate growth, creating a community that would forever be adored by many. Ridgefield was home to distinguished residents, such as Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the Morse code, and Alexander Shaler, Civil War Union army general and Medal of Honor recipient. The charming landscape and stunning views would captivate some of America's most prominent 20th-century artists. This collection of historical images provides a glimpse into what Ridgefield once was and how it grew into what it is today.