Hudson River
The Hudson River is a 315-mile river that flows from north to south through eastern New York in the United States. The river originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York, flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the Upper New York Bay between New York City and Jersey City, it drains into the Atlantic Ocean at New York Harbor. The river serves as a political boundary between the states of New Jersey and New York at its southern end. Further north, it marks local boundaries between several New York counties; the lower half of the river is a tidal estuary, deeper than the body of water into which it flows, occupying the Hudson Fjord, an inlet which formed during the most recent period of North American glaciation, estimated at 26,000 to 13,300 years ago. Tidal waters influence the Hudson's flow from as far north as the city of Troy; the river is named after Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, who explored it in 1609, after whom Hudson Bay in Canada is named.
It had been observed by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailing for King Francis I of France in 1524, as he became the first European known to have entered the Upper New York Bay, but he considered the river to be an estuary. The Dutch called the river the North River – with the Delaware River called the South River – and it formed the spine of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Settlements of the colony clustered around the Hudson, its strategic importance as the gateway to the American interior led to years of competition between the English and the Dutch over control of the river and colony. During the eighteenth century, the river valley and its inhabitants were the subject and inspiration of Washington Irving, the first internationally acclaimed American author. In the nineteenth century, the area inspired the Hudson River School of landscape painting, an American pastoral style, as well as the concepts of environmentalism and wilderness; the Hudson was the eastern outlet for the Erie Canal, when completed in 1825, became an important transportation artery for the early-19th-century United States.
The source of the Hudson River is Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondack Park at an altitude of 4,322 feet. However, the river is not cartographically called the Hudson River until miles downstream; the river is named Feldspar Brook until its confluence with Calamity Brook, is named Calamity Brook until the river reaches Indian Pass Brook, flowing south from the outlet of Henderson Lake. From that point on, the stream is cartographically known as the Hudson River; the U. S. Geological Survey uses this cartographical definition; the longest source of the Hudson River as shown on the most detailed USGS maps is the "Opalescent River" on the west slopes of Little Marcy Mountain, originating two miles north of Lake Tear of the Clouds, several miles, past the Flowed Lands, to the Hudson River. And a mile longer than "Feldspar Brook", which flows out of that lake in the Adirondack Mountains. Popular culture and convention, more cite the photogenic Lake Tear of the Clouds as the source. Using river names as seen on maps, Indian Pass Brook flows into Henderson Lake, the outlet from Henderson Lake flows east and meets the southwest flowing Calamity Brook.
The confluence of the two rivers is. South of the outlet of Sanford Lake, the Opalescent River flows into the Hudson; the Hudson flows south, taking in Beaver Brook and the outlet of Lake Harris. After its confluence with the Indian River, the Hudson forms the boundary between Essex and Hamilton counties. In the hamlet of North River, the Hudson flows in Warren County and takes in the Schroon River. Further south, the river forms the boundary between Saratoga Counties; the river takes in the Sacandaga River from the Great Sacandaga Lake. Shortly thereafter, the river leaves the Adirondack Park, flows under Interstate 87, through Glens Falls, just south of Lake George although receiving no streamflow from the lake, it next goes through Hudson Falls. At this point the river forms the boundary between Saratoga Counties. Here the river has an elevation of 200 feet. Just south in Fort Edward, the river reaches its confluence with the Champlain Canal, which provided boat traffic between New York City and Montreal and the rest of Eastern Canada via the Hudson, Lake Champlain and the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
Further south the Hudson takes in water from the Batten Kill River and Fish Creek near Schuylerville. The river forms the boundary between Saratoga and Rensselaer counties; the river enters the heart of the Capital District. It takes in water from the Hoosic River. Shortly thereafter the river has its confluence with the Mohawk River, the largest tributary of the Hudson River, in Waterford; the river reaches the Federal Dam in Troy, marking an impoundment of the river. At an elevation of 2 feet, the bottom of the dam marks the beginning of the tidal influence in the Hudson as well as the beginning of the lower Hudson River. South of the Federal Dam, the Hudson River begins to widen considerably; the river enters the Hudson Valley, flowing along the west bank of Albany and the east bank of Rensselaer. Interstate 90 crosses the Hudson into Albany at this point in the river; the Hudson leaves the Capital District, forming the boundary between Greene and Columbia Counties. It meets its confluence with Schodack Creek, widening at this point.
After flowing by Hudson, the river forms the boundary between Ulster and Columbia Counties and Ulster and Dutchess Counties, passing Germantown and Kingston. The Delaware and Hudson Canal meets the river at t
Watermill
A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling, rolling, or hammering; such processes are needed in the production of many material goods, including flour, paper and many metal products. These watermills may comprise gristmills, paper mills, textile mills, trip hammering mills, rolling mills, wire drawing mills. One major way to classify watermills is by wheel orientation, one powered by a vertical waterwheel through a gear mechanism, the other equipped with a horizontal waterwheel without such a mechanism; the former type can be further divided, depending on where the water hits the wheel paddles, into undershot, overshot and pitchback waterwheel mills. Another way to classify water mills is by an essential trait about their location: tide mills use the movement of the tide. According to Terry S. Reynolds and R. J. Forbes, the water wheel may have originated from the ancient Near East in the 3rd century BC for use in moving millstones and small-scale grain grinding.
Reynolds suggests that the first water wheels were norias and, by the 2nd century BC, evolved into the vertical watermill in Syria and Asia Minor, from where it spread to ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. S. Avitsur supports a Near-Eastern origin for the watermill. Engineers in the Hellenistic world used the two main components of watermills, the waterwheel and toothed gearing, along with the Roman Empire, operated undershot and breastshot waterwheel mills. Early evidence of a water-driven wheel is the Perachora wheel, in Greece. An early written reference is in the technical treatises Pneumatica and Parasceuastica of the Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium; the British historian of technology M. J. T. Lewis has shown that those portions of Philo of Byzantium's mechanical treatise which describe water wheels and which have been regarded as Arabic interpolations date back to the Greek 3rd-century BC original; the sakia gear is fully developed, attested in a 2nd-century BC Hellenistic wall painting in Ptolemaic Egypt.
Lewis assigns the date of the invention of the horizontal-wheeled mill to the Greek colony of Byzantium in the first half of the 3rd century BC, that of the vertical-wheeled mill to Ptolemaic Alexandria around 240 BC. The Greek geographer Strabon reports in his Geography a water-powered grain-mill to have existed near the palace of king Mithradates VI Eupator at Cabira, Asia Minor, before 71 BC; the Roman engineer Vitruvius has the first technical description of a watermill, dated to 40/10 BC. He seems to indicate the existence of water-powered kneading machines; the Greek epigrammatist Antipater of Thessalonica tells of an advanced overshot wheel mill around 20 BC/10 AD. He praised for its use in grinding grain and the reduction of human labour: Hold back your hand from the mill, you grinding girls. For Demeter has imposed the labours of your hands on the nymphs, who leaping down upon the topmost part of the wheel, rotate its axle. If we learn to feast toil-free on the fruits of the earth, we taste again the golden age.
The Roman encyclopedist Pliny mentions in his Naturalis Historia of around 70 AD water-powered trip hammers operating in the greater part of Italy. There is evidence of a fulling mill in 73/4 AD in Roman Syria. Another Roman author Ausonius mentions a lot of watermills in the walley of Rhine and its tributaries in the 4th century, it is that a water-powered stamp mill was used at Dolaucothi to crush gold-bearing quartz, with a possible date of the late 1st century to the early 2nd century. The stamps were operated as a batch of four working against a large conglomerate block, now known as Carreg Pumpsaint. Similar anvil stones have been found at other Roman mines across Europe in Spain and Portugal; the 1st-century AD multiple mill complex of Barbegal in southern France has been described as "the greatest known concentration of mechanical power in the ancient world". It featured 16 overshot waterwheels to power an equal number of flour mills; the capacity of the mills has been estimated at 4.5 tons of flour per day, sufficient to supply enough bread for the 12,500 inhabitants occupying the town of Arelate at that time.
A similar mill complex existed on the Janiculum hill, whose supply of flour for Rome's population was judged by emperor Aurelian important enough to be included in the Aurelian walls in the late 3rd century. A breastshot wheel mill dating to the late 2nd century AD was excavated at Les Martres-de-Veyre, France; the 3rd-century AD Hierapolis water-powered stone sawmill is the earliest known machine to incorporate a crank and connecting rod mechanism. Further sawmills powered by crank and connecting rod mechanisms, are archaeologically attested for the 6th-century water-powered stone sawmills at Gerasa and Ephesus. Literary references to water-powered marble saws in what is now Germany can be found in Ausonius 4th-century poem Mosella, they seem to be indicated about the same time by the Christian saint Gregory of Nyssa from Anatolia, demonstrating a diversified use of water-power in many parts of the Roman Empire. The earliest turbine mill was
Easton, Pennsylvania
Easton is a city in and the county seat of Northampton County, United States. The city's population was 26,800 as of the 2010 census. Easton is located at the confluence of the Delaware River and the Lehigh River 55 miles north of Philadelphia and 70 miles west of New York City. Easton is the easternmost city in the Lehigh Valley, a region of 731 square miles, home to more than 800,000 people. Together with Allentown and Bethlehem, the Valley embraces the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton metropolitan area, including Lehigh and Carbon counties within Pennsylvania, Warren County in the adjacent state of New Jersey. Easton is the smallest of the three Lehigh Valley cities, with one-fourth of the population of the largest Lehigh Valley city, Allentown. In turn, this metropolitan area comprises Pennsylvania's third-largest metropolitan area and the state's largest and most populous contribution to the greater New York City metropolitan area; the city is split up into four sections: Historic Downtown, which lies directly to the north of the Lehigh River, to the west of the Delaware River, continuing west to Sixth Street.
The boroughs of Wilson, West Easton, Glendon are directly adjacent to the city. The greater Easton area consists of the city, three townships, three boroughs. Centre Square, the town square of the city's Downtown neighborhood, is home to the Soldiers' & Sailors' Monument, a memorial for Easton area veterans killed during the American Civil War; the Peace Candle, a candle-like structure, is assembled and disassembled every year atop the Civil War monument for the Christmas season. The Norfolk Southern Railway's Lehigh Line, runs through Easton on its way to Bethlehem and Allentown heading west and to Phillipsburg, New Jersey just across the Delaware River; the Lenape Native Americans referred to the area as "Lechauwitank", or "The Place at the Forks". The site of the future city was part of the land obtained from the Delawares by the Walking Purchase. Thomas Penn set aside a 1,000 acres tract of land at the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware rivers for a town. Easton was settled by Europeans in 1739 and founded in 1752, was so named at the request of Penn.
As Northampton County was being formed at this time, Easton was selected as its county seat. During the French and Indian War, the Treaty of Easton was signed here by the British colonial government of the Province of Pennsylvania and the Native American tribes in the Ohio Country, including the Shawnee and Lenape. Easton was an important military center during the American Revolutionary War. During the Revolutionary War, Easton had a military hospital. On 18 June 1779, General John Sullivan led 2,500 Continentals from Easton to engage British Indian allies on the frontier. Easton was one of the first three places, it is claimed that the Easton flag was flown during that reading, making it one of the first "Stars and Stripes" to fly over the colonies. This flag was used by a militia company during the War of 1812, serves as Easton's municipal flag. Sited at the confluence of the flowing Lehigh River's waters with the more stately waters of the deeper wider Delaware, Easton became a major commercial center during the canal and railroad periods of the 19th century, when it would become a transportation hub for the eastern steel industry.
The Delaware Canal, was built soon after the lower Lehigh Canal became effective in and reliably delivering much needed anthracite coal, into more settled lands along the rivers. And the Morris would serve to connect the developing Coal Regions to the north and west, to the fuel starved iron works to the west, the commercial port of Philadelphia to the south, to the many home owners seeking fuel for heat within Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Seeing other ways of exploiting the new fuel source, other entrepreneurs moved to connect across the Delaware River reaching into the New York City area to the east via a connection with the Morris Canal in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, so the town became a canal nexus or hub from which the Coal from Mauch Chunk reached the world; the early railroads were built to parallel and speed shipping along transportation corridors, by the late 1860s the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad and Lehigh Valley Railroad were built to augment the bulk traffic through the canals and provide lucrative passenger travel services.
The LVRR, known as'the Black Diamond Line' would boast the twice daily "Black Diamond Express" daily passenger trains to and from New York City and Buffalo, New York via Easton. The Central Railroad of New Jersey, would lease and operate the LH&S tracks from the 1870s until the Conrail consolidations absorbed both the Central Railroad of New Jersey and Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1966. Today, the Lehigh Valley Railroad's main line is the only major rail line that goes through Easton and is now known as the Lehigh Line.
Boxcar
A boxcar is the North American term for a railroad car, enclosed and used to carry freight. The boxcar, while not the simplest freight car design, is the most versatile, since it can carry most loads. Boxcars have side doors of varying size and operation, some include end doors and adjustable bulkheads to load large items. Similar covered freight cars outside North America are covered goods wagons and, depending on the region, are called goods van, louvre van, covered wagon or van. Boxcars can carry most kinds of freight, they were hand-loaded, but in more recent years mechanical assistance such as forklifts have been used to load and empty them faster. Their generalized design is still slower to load and unload than specialized designs of car, this explains the decline in boxcar numbers since World War II; the other cause for this decline is the dramatic shift of waterborne cargo transport to container shipping. A boxcar without the wheels and chassis, a container is designed to be amenable to intermodal freight transport, whether by container ships, trucks or trains, can be delivered door-to-door.
Loose loads such as coal and ore can be carried in a boxcar with boards over the side door openings. Grain transport would use metal reinforced cardboard, nailed over the door and could be punctured by a grain auger for unloading; this was more common in earlier days. It was impossible to mechanically load and unload. Grain can be transported in boxcars designed for that purpose. However, grain is better transported in covered hopper cars. Livestock can be transported in boxcars, the standard practice in the U. S. until the mid-1880s. But, there is insufficient ventilation in warm weather. Specially-built stock cars or converted boxcars are preferable. Insulated boxcars are used for certain types of perishable loads that do not require the precise temperature control provided by a refrigerator car. Circuses used boxcars to transport their workers and animals to get from town to town. Box cars were used for bulk commodities such as coal in the Midwestern United States in the early 20th century; this use was sufficiently widespread that several companies developed competing box-car loaders to automate coal loading.
By 1905, 350 to 400 such machines were in use at Midwestern coal mines. Automobiles were carried in boxcars, but during the 1960s specially built autoracks took over> These carried more cars in the same space and were easier to load and unload. The automotive parts business has always been a big user of boxcars. Larger capacity "high cube" cars evolved in the 1960s to meet needs of the auto parts industry; the most common boxcars are 50 ft 6 in to 60 ft 9 in in length, 9 ft 4 in to 9 ft 6 in wide, 10 ft 10 in to 11 ft 8 in high. A hi-roof boxcar is 13 ft 0 in in height; these are inside dimensions. Corresponding exterior dimensions would be 55 ft 5 in to 67 ft 11 in in length, 10 ft 6 in to 10 ft 8 in in width. A double-door boxcar has two sliding doors on each side instead of one. Double-door boxcars can be more convenient for household passage uses; the double door gives the user a wider range of options than a standard one. Door-and-a-half cars were used on the PRR, N&W, B&O, WSS, CNJ railroads since the smaller opening did not require as much inside bracing.
In recent years, high cubic capacity boxcars have become more common in the USA. These are taller than regular boxcars; the excess height section of the car end is painted with a white band so as to be visible if wrongly assigned to a low-clearance line. The internal height of the 86-foot hicube boxcars used in automotive parts service was 12 feet 9 inches; the boxcar has been used to carry passengers during wartime. In both world wars, French boxcars known as forty-and-eights were used as troop transports as well as for freight; the shared experience among Allied soldiers spawned groups such as the Forty and Eight veterans organization. In addition to soldiers, the Germans transported prisoners in crowded boxcars during the Nazi regime, an undisclosed number of German soldiers captured by the U. S. Army died of suffocation in American boxcars transporting them from the front-line to prisoner of war camps in March 1945; the same transportation was used by the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s, when over 1.5 million people were transferred to Siberia and other areas from different countries and areas incorporated into the Soviet Union.
Hobos have used boxcars in their journeys, since they are enclosed and therefore they cannot be seen by railroad security or police, as well as being to some degree insulated from cold weather. Bockscar General Utility Van Railbox Troop sleeper Akron and Youngstown Railroad #3024 – Photo and short history of an example of an outside-braced wooden boxcar built by Mather Stock Car Company Atchison and Santa Fe Railway #276594 – Photo and short history of an example of a typical modern steel boxcar Union Pacific Railroad #498769 – Photo and short history of an example of a typical "billboard" boxcar Guide to Railcars
Thomas Kean
Thomas Howard Kean Sr. is an American businessman, academic administrator and politician who served as the 48th Governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990 as a Republican. Kean is best known globally, for his 2002 appointment as Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States known as the 9/11 Commission, responsible for investigating the causes of the September 11, 2001 attacks and providing recommendations to prevent future terrorist attacks, he was appointed to this post by U. S. President George W. Bush. Upon the completion of his second term as Governor, he served as the President of Drew University for 15 years, until his retirement in 2005. Kean was born in New York City to a long line of New Jersey politicians and family of Dutch Americans, his mother was Elizabeth and his father, Robert Kean, was a U. S. Representative, his grandfather Hamilton Fish Kean and great-uncle John Kean both served as U. S. Senators, his second great-uncle was Hamilton Fish, a U. S. Senator, Governor of New York, the 26th U.
S. Secretary of State. Kean's relative, William Livingston, was a delegate to the Continental Congress and the first Governor of New Jersey. Kean was educated at The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia When he reached the fourth grade, he entered St. Albans School. In 1946, at the age of eleven, his parents enrolled him at St. Mark's School in Southborough, the alma mater of his father and two older brothers. After graduating from St. Mark's, he attended Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, where he received his B. A. participated in the American Whig-Cliosophic Society. After working on his father's unsuccessful senatorial campaign, as a history teacher for three years at St. Mark's School, Kean attended Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City and earned his M. A. in history. Kean was a longtime resident of New Jersey. A teacher of history and government, Kean was elected, in 1967, as a Republican to the New Jersey General Assembly, he ran with Philip Kaltenbacher, a Short Hills Republican who had served as an aide to Assemblyman Irwin Kimmelman in 1964 through 1966.
In the Republican primary and Kaltenbacher defeated Donald Fitz Maurice, Vivian Tompkins Lange, the sister of former U. S. Attorney William F. Tompkins, Joseph Shanahan. At the start of the Assembly session in 1972, Democratic leadership had wanted to name S. Howard Woodson of Trenton as Speaker, until Assemblyman David Friedland made a deal as one of four Democrats who voted to give the minority Republicans control of the General Assembly, electing Kean as Assembly Speaker. Woodson would have been the Assembly's first African American Speaker, charges of racism were leveled by fellow Democrats against Friedland. In the next Assembly, in 1974, the Democrats united behind Woodson for Speaker. In 1973, he served as acting New Jersey governor. During the 1976 presidential campaign, Kean served as Gerald Ford's campaign manager for the state of New Jersey. In 1977, Kean ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for the governor of New Jersey. Although he spent most of his career as a political moderate, in this race Kean ran to the right of New Jersey Senate Minority Leader Raymond Bateman.
Kean was unable to obtain the endorsement of many county Republican chairmen, or Gerald Ford, despite having served as his campaign director for the state of New Jersey the previous year. Bateman defeated Kean and won the nomination, though Bateman went on to lose the general election to Brendan Byrne. After the election, Governor Byrne appointed Kean as a commissioner on the board of the New Jersey Highway Authority. Kean worked as a political commentator on New Jersey public television. Kean fared better four years in 1981, when he again ran for governor. Kean made campaign promises to foster job creation, clean up toxic waste sites, reduce crime, to preserve home rule, he received the endorsement of Gerald Ford his second time running for governor. Kean defeated Democratic Representative Jim Florio in the closest election in New Jersey gubernatorial election history; the election was controversial due to the involvement of the Republican National Committee, who appointed a Ballot Security Task Force that intimidated voters.
One of his strategists for the Kean campaign in 1981 was Roger J. Stone, a self-proclaimed "GOP hitman."Kean proved hugely popular in office. In striking contrast to his slim 1981 victory, he won re-election in 1985 with the largest margin of victory recorded for a gubernatorial race in New Jersey, defeating Peter Shapiro Essex County Executive, 70%–29%. Kean won every municipality in the state except Audubon Park and Chesilhurst in Camden County and Roosevelt in Monmouth County, his coattails were long enough for the Republicans to take control of the General Assembly, flipping it from a 44–36 Democratic majority to a 50–30 Republican majority. In 1988, reflecting his stature as an up-and-coming leader of the Republican Party's moderate wing, Kean delivered the keynote speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans; the same year, he authored a book, The Politics of Inclusion, published by Free Press, which urged political cooperation among divided interest groups and politicians.
Limited to two consecutive terms as governor by the New Jersey State Constitution, Kean left office in January 1990 as one of the most popular political figures in New Jersey political history. Former New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester, New Jersey Congressman Bob Franks, and
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle; the Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, New Jersey to the east. Pennsylvania is the 33rd-largest state by area, the 6th-most populous state according to the most recent official U. S. Census count in 2010, it is the 9th-most densely populated of the 50 states. Pennsylvania's two most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh; the state capital and its 10th largest city is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of waterfront along the Delaware Estuary; the state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden.
It was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12, 1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the state's largest city of Philadelphia. During the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washington's headquarters during the bitter winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west. Of a total 46,055 square miles, 44,817 square miles are land, 490 square miles are inland waters, 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie, it is the 33rd-largest state in the United States. Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Of the original Thirteen Colonies, Pennsylvania is the only state that does not border the Atlantic Ocean; the boundaries of the state are the Mason–Dixon line to the south, the Twelve-Mile Circle on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border, the Delaware River to the east, 80° 31' W to the west and the 42° N to the north, with the exception of a short segment on the western end, where a triangle extends north to Lake Erie.
Cities include Philadelphia, Reading and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown and Easton in the central east. The northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest. State College serves the central region while Williamsport serves the commonwealth's north-central region as does Chambersburg the south-central region, with York and the state capital Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River in the east-central region of the Commonwealth and Altoona and Johnstown in the west-central region; the state has five geographical regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Erie Plain. New York Ontario Maryland Delaware West Virginia New Jersey Ohio Pennsylvania's diverse topography produces a variety of climates, though the entire state experiences cold winters and humid summers. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the southeastern corner, has a humid continental climate.
The southern portion of the state has a humid subtropical climate. The largest city, has some characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware and Maryland to the south. Summers are hot and humid. Moving toward the mountainous interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increases, snowfall amounts are greater. Western areas of the state locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the entire state receives plentiful precipitation throughout the year; the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, such as 30 recorded tornadoes in 2011; as of 1600, the tribes living in Pennsylvania were the Algonquian Lenape, the Iroquoian Susquehannock & Petun and the Siouan Monongahela Culture, who may have been the same as a little known tribe called the Calicua, or Cali. Other tribes who entered the region during the colonial era were the Trockwae, Saponi, Nanticoke, Conoy Piscataway, Iroquois Confederacy—possibly among others.
Other tribes, like the Erie, may have once held some land in Pennsylvania, but no longer did so by the year 1600. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their colonial lands in America; the Dutch were the first to take possession. By June 3, 1631, the Dutch had begun settling the Delmarva Peninsula by establishing the Zwaanendael Colony on the site of present-day Lewes, Delaware. In 1638, Sweden established the New Sweden Colony, in the region of Fort Christina, on the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. New Sweden claimed and, for the most part, controlled the lower Delaware River region (parts of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, Pe
Sussex Railroad
The Sussex Railroad was a short-line railroad in northwestern New Jersey. It replaced its predecessor, the Sussex Mine Railroad, in 1853 and operated under the Sussex Railroad Company until 1945 when it was merged into the Delaware and Western Railroad system; the Sussex Railroad was important in the economic development of Sussex County as it supplied a route for early local industries, such as dairy farms and ore mines, to export their products. It was the last independently operated New Jersey railroad; the last train travelled on the Sussex Railroad tracks on October 2, 1966. The tracks were removed soon after and the right-of-way was transformed into a rail trail known as the Sussex Branch trail; the Sussex Mine Railroad, chartered on March 9, 1848, was the predecessor of the Sussex Railroad, to be used for the sole purpose of hauling iron ore from the re-opened Andover Mine. The 3 ft narrow gauge railway was drawn by mules from the Andover Mine down to the Morris Canal at Waterloo Village and was taken on to the Thomas Iron Furnaces in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
The Act by the New Jersey Legislature that incorporated the railroad allowed for the provision of extending the rail into Newton, the county seat. The initial 11 mi of the Sussex Mine Railroad from the mine in Andover, named after the mine, was started in May 1849 and completed in August 1851. During construction of the railroad, the legislature approved a supplement to the charter on March 18, 1851, that allowed the railroad to extend the line to the Morris & Essex Railroad, extending its line to Hackettstown; the Sussex Mine Railroad struck a deal with the M&E that would work in their favor if they were to have the connection ready for operation by the time the M&E's extension reached Waterloo. In preparation for this extension and what became a rebuilding of the entire existing line, the New Jersey Legislature approved another supplement to the charter on January 26, 1853, that allowed the company to change its name to the Sussex Railroad, reflecting its new purpose beyond just serving the mines and authorized the company to extend the track to any point in Sussex County on the Delaware River.
The renamed Sussex Railroad Company gained support by issuing stock and bonds, which raised the necessary funds to lay the new track. Ground was broken on the 4 ft 10 in track gauge line from Newton to Waterloo on May 5, 1853; the company wanted to proceed to meet the deadline for the agreement that, if met, would mean a substantial source of revenue. Because of this fast pace, steeper grades and tighter curves were adopted than might have been preferred otherwise. Work progressed even though the M&E was trying to slow down progress any way they could, including compensating employees of the Sussex Railroad to delay the necessary cuts south of Newton. To speed work along, the Sussex Railroad Company used employees of the Andover Mine temporarily on the railroad right-of-way. All of this effort paid off; the new railroad was completed and the first train entered Newton on November 27, 1854, with traffic between Newton and Waterloo being opened on December 11, 1854. The M&E connected to the Sussex Railroad in January 1855, thus the financial agreement made earlier was upheld.
At this point, the only stations on the Sussex Railroad were at Newton and Waterloo, but they served many industries and moved products such as produce, meat, of course iron ore from the mines. Increased interest in the franklinite and iron and zinc ores from Franklin further northeast of Newton prompted the New Jersey Legislature to adopt another supplement on February 4, 1863, that authorized the railroad to continue its line up to the Franklin Furnace and to other points north if "deemed most for the public good."Expansion came swiftly with ground breaking on a ten-mile extension line north of Newton through Lafayette and Augusta to Branchville in 1866, around the same time that the track gauge was adjusted to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in standard gauge. To align with the M&E tracks; this branch would allow for an outlet for Sussex County's northern agricultural products and staged the potential future expansion of the line through Culver's Gap to the Delaware River. The first train to run on the Branchville extension went as far as Lafayette on January 1, 1869, as work continued further up the line.
At the same time as work was being done on the Branchville line, pressure was increasing to bring rail to the ever-increasing mining industries of Franklin, including the New Jersey Zinc Company. Work began on this nine-mile ) extension in 1868, after a heated debate and political power plays that could have routed traffic around Newton entirely, but residents of Newton rejected any plan to leave their town off the main line of traffic and insisted that the extension to Franklin be built north of Newton. The Franklin line opened to regular service in mid-September 1869. Additionally, an unconnected four-mile spur known as the South Vernon extension, which ran from Hamburg to McAfee, was completed in 1871 and allowed access to an iron ore mine at the base of the Pochuck mountain range via trackage rights on the New Jersey Midland Railway; this represented the height of track building on the Sussex Railroad. In the 1870s, depots at Franklin, McAfee, Lafayette were completed and a new depot at Newton was constructed.
Some other platforms used for local agricultural industries were completed at Sparta Junction and Monroe. The 1870s saw another supplem
