Ramapough

We’re slowly expanding our circle of exploration in Northern New Jersey. Last weekend, we took the kids to Ringwood State Park, which is on the northern most edge of New Jersey. The park included two funky, old manors, acres of gardens, and nice hiking trails through the Ramapo mountains. We’ll be going there a lot.

Nestled right in those mountains, however, is a great deal of poverty. It’s home to the Ramapoughs, an group descended from Native Americans and the original Dutch settlers. They’ve been devastated by poverty and preyed upon by corruption. In the 1960s, the Ford Motor Company dumped tons of paint sludge in the abandoned iron mines that had provided iron for musket balls in the Revolutionary war. It’s hard to believe that all this exists 40 minutes from Manhattan.

From the Bergen Record:

The paint sludge is from the Ford Motor Co.’s factory in Mahwah, once the largest auto assembly plant in the nation. Before closing in 1980, the behemoth plant spat out 6 million vehicles and an ocean of contaminants – including enough paint sludge to fill two of the three tubes of the Lincoln Tunnel.

Millions of gallons of paint sludge was dumped in the remote section of Ringwood that is home to the Ramapoughs. Their children played in it. The streams washed over it. Early this summer, state officials announced some cancer rates there are unusually high. The Ramapoughs blame the sludge.

It’s a horrific story.