Crowdsourcing Rusyn places in the US

Rusyns may not be a well-known ethnic group, but we have quite a presence if you know where to look. This is especially evident in the Northeastern US, where many onion-domed churches were founded by Rusyn immigrants in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

I always look for Rusyn sites when I'm traveling, and have seen quite a few Facebook posts asking for Rusyn points of interest in Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA), for example. After a quick poll to gauge interest and participation, I started a collaborative Google Map that we could use to map Rusyn places in the US. In under a week, we already had an impressive collection of points on the map!


Data in this map is organized into several layers:

• Rusyn Places in the US - This is the layer most people will view and/or edit. 
• Blue points indicate a Rusyn place of interest
• Brown points indicate a Rusyn-style wooden church (more on that later)
• Former Rusyn Places in the US - This layer contains places that have a Rusyn history and have been repurposed, closed, or demolished.  
• Gray points indicate a place that is no longer used by Rusyns, but still has significance (architectural, cornerstone, etc.)
• Black points indicate a place that no longer has any Rusyn significance or has been demolished. These points still provide context for the extent of a former Rusyn community 
• Needs More Info - This layer includes places that are too vague to be useful or may be Rusyn but aren't confirmed (by sources or colloquial knowledge). 
• Red points were identified either during my review of newly added points or in my own research, and require additional digging. 
• Rusyn Places in Canada - This layer includes two Rusyn-style wooden churches in Canada because they were too interesting to leave off the map, and are very close to the Northeastern US.
• Russian Brotherhood Organization Lodges (-1959) - This layer includes towns that had a RBO lodge before 1959, as listed on the Rusyns of PA blog. This layer provides places for me to investigate for additional Rusyn communities and places that I may not have found otherwise.
• Green points are placed on the town, as these lodges often didn't have addresses of their own and met in churches or other businesses.
  

Findings

Not surprisingly, churches and cemeteries are most of the mark we've left on the US over the past 136 years*. I did find some fun things though:

• Monuments (a giant Campbell's Soup can signed by Andy Warhol, a statue of baseball player Stan Musial)
• Roads named for individuals or an entire group of people (Lemko Way, Olyphant, PA)
• A park (named for former Manville, NJ mayor George Papawick)

Of course, Rusyns need their pirogi, so I included a number of Eastern European restaurants in Rusyn areas, along with the famously Rusyn Baba's Pirogies in Brooklyn, and a future Rusyn restaurant in Johnstown, PA.

Take one look at the map and you'll notice that most of the Rusyn places in PA are in NEPA or near Pittsburgh. There are a significant amount of Rusyn places in NJ and OH as well. I also learned more about a number of Rusyn outposts in less likely places, like Hartshorne, OK and Brookside, AL. Rusyns migrated from the Northeastern US to Hartshorne and Brookside for job opportunities in the mines.

The most exciting find though, is a number of Rusyn-style wooden churches in the US and Ontario, Canada! Who knew?!? Here's the list, so far:

If you know of any that I missed, please comment below!

Idea for a Road Trip

I'm still stuck at home, trying to stay safe during a global pandemic. I'm not sure when I'll get to do this road trip, but I can dream... I used MapQuest's route planner again and came up with this route. I can visit all of the Rusyn-style wooden churches in the Northeast in 26 hours of driving!


I excluded the two in Ontario, Canada, since Canada is not letting Americans (or any other foreign nationals) in during the pandemic**. I also excluded the church in Georgia, because it is so far from the rest of the churches. I'll have to save that for another trip.

Sources

I cited my sources in each point on the map. If there's no comment in the map point, it was a suggestion by someone in the Facebook group, or was added by a user. For further reading, check out these links:

• Rusyns of Pennsylvania blog
• Kubek Project blog
• Carpatho-Rusyns Everywhere Facebook Group  
• Lemko Rusyns and Friends (Лемкы-Русины з приятелями) Facebook Group

* St Michael's in Shenandoah was the first Rusyn church in the US. It was built in 1884 and demolished in 2015. The congregation still exists, and has a newer church building that they've used for many years.
** I don't blame them. The US has some work to do, as infection numbers are skyrocketing again.

Road Trip: Every County in New Jersey

*** While we're all quarantined under Stay-At-Home orders in the northeast, I thought you might enjoy a virtual trip to every county in New Jersey. Boyfriend and I did this back in 2017, and I never got around to posting about it. I hope you enjoy! ***

Road Trip!

You know what state is pretty cool? New Jersey. It gets a bad name, but it's a cool place. There are mountains, beaches, cities, swamps, forests, trains, and other cool stuff. Like beer and live music!

But is New Jersey even truly one place? I’d argue it is not. There’s the North Jersey vs South Jersey debate; and don’t forget to throw Central Jersey (I can confirm that it does indeed exist – I lived there) into the mix. New York City vs Philadelphia. Hoagies vs Subs. Pinelands and Skylands. City and Shore. For a tiny state, it has a lot of variety… and only 21 counties!

You know what would be a fun road trip? Visiting every county in NJ in one day. And better yet, let's visit the County Seat of every county in one day!

The Plan

Google Maps isn't up for this sort of routing, so I used MapQuest. Though the site is pretty slow and full of ads, it's easy to use and has some great features. I typed in the name of every County Seat as a destination, told it to work its magic, and here is the result:

According to MapQuest’s routing trip planner, our mission should take just under 11 hours (10:25, but we also had 15-20 mins to/from home on the 1^st and last stops). We planned to do the following in each county:

• Take a selfie.
• Check in on FourSquare/Swarm, including the selfie. Cross-post to Facebook.
• Take a “real photo” of the town/surroundings.
• Nothing else... no time to waste!

As you’ll soon see, we had to stretch the meaning of “a single day”… But here’s the breakdown for each place!

1.      New Brunswick, Middlesex County

Arrival time: 11:45 AM

Starting our journey!

2.      Trenton, Mercer County

Arrival time: 12:42 PM

The state capital!

3.      Mount Holly, Burlington County

Arrival time: 1:15 PM

I didn’t know much about Mount Holly, other than the fact that my weather forecast comes from there. It looked like a nice town!

4.      Camden, Camden County

Arrival time: 2:02 PM

Camden’s picture is *of* Philly, but taken *in* Camden.

5.      Woodbury, Gloucester County

Arrival time: 2:45 PM

Another town that looked pretty interesting!

6.      Salem, Salem County

Arrival time: 3:40 PM

Salem gets two pics because I loooved their library!

7.      Bridgeton, Cumberland County

Arrival time: 4:15 PM

Bridgeton had a really cool mural in their downtown park. Here’s an excerpt from NJ.com:

“The mural here features the area’s agricultural history and ethnic diversity against landmarks like the courthouse. Lake Street’s “Seven Gables” home is pictured toward the top of the mural. Built in 1871, the building had been a boarding school for girls, a maternity hospital and is now John Moriarty’s house.” More info here: https://www.nj.com/cumberland/2011/10/bridgetons_downtown_mural_park.html

8.      Cape May Courthouse, Cape May County

Arrival time: 5:30 PM

The driving time from Bridgeton to Mays Landing was 41 minutes. Add Cape May Courthouse in there? 1hr 30mins. Cape May County is so far south!!

9.      Mays Landing, Atlantic County

Arrival time: 6:19 PM

So much driving.

10. Toms River, Ocean County

Arrival time: 7:45 PM

A quick stop in Toms River while some fierce storm clouds formed overhead…

11. Freehold, Monmouth County

Arrival time: 8:15 PM

I didn’t realize Freehold had a downtown. I’ve driven around the area before, but always in the township. I’ll have to go back and spend more time.

12. Elizabeth, Union County

Arrival time: 9:05 PM

Last county seat with any daylight. Blue hour is perfect for photos!

13. Newark, Essex County

Arrival time: 9:30 PM

Is there a better spot for a photo than Newark Penn Station? Probably not - trains are great!

14. Jersey City, Hudson County

Arrival time: 10:00 PM

Jersey City was really busy! My photo includes a line of taxis.

15. Hackensack, Bergen County

Arrival time: 10:30 PM

Another first! I’ve been in this area before, but never actually visited Hackensack. Thwarted by an unexpected one-way street, we ended up taking the photo in a park across from the county building.

16. Paterson, Passaic County

Arrival time: 10:59 PM

If it was daytime, we would’ve gone to Paterson Great Falls. But it was nighttime, and we weren’t sure if it would be open and/or well-lit enough for the selfie. I scouted potential locations while boyfriend drove, and came across the county building’s annex. WOW! It was built in 1899 as a US Post Office. The second picture is the current county building.

17. Morristown, Morris County

Arrival time: 11:50 PM

I’ve spent some time in Morristown, but couldn’t pick a spot for a photo. Ended up on the Green!

18. Newton, Sussex County

Arrival time: 12:45 AM

Poor photo quality because I was really tired.

O.M.G. is it bedtime yet? Ok, guys. This is where we called it. We still had 3 county seats (2.5+ hours of driving) and it was 1am. Just think of the blurry selfies. We drove home (an HOUR from Newton), slept for ~6 hours, and got back on the road with enough time to make it to the remaining 3 county seats in under 24 hours. Still “a single day” in my book.

19. Belvidere, Warren County

Arrival time: 9:48 AM

Back at it! Did you know that Belvidere is home of the “County Seaters”? The tiny downtown was pretty busy on Sunday morning! Fun fact: the guy who founded Scranton, PA was from Belvidere.

20. Flemington, Hunterdon County

Arrival time: 10:40 AM

Let’s be real. For #20 I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired, and we just took the photo where we ended up parking. As luck* would have it, we ended up parking across from the Union Hotel. This is a really cool building from the early 1800s that was recently slated for demolition (developers wanted to reuse the land), but the community pushed back. The result was a compromise: the developers will use the façade of the hotel in their new development.

*Because we targeted downtown areas in every county seat.

21. Somerville, Somerset County

Arrival time: 11:15 AM

Our last county seat, and it’s one of my favorites. We made it! To celebrate, we stopped for a real meal at Boulevard Seafood.

The Results

We did it! Every county in NJ within 24 hours. Total time: 16 hours** (13:30 + 2:30). Woohoo!

Lessons learned?

• MapQuest’s route planner/optimizer is great! As long as you can put up with ads.
• Do your math. We ended up spending ~15 minutes in each place (find parking and/or photo location, take photo, post photo, get directions to the next place, and get back on the road), plus we had a few (3?) bathroom/food/gas stops. As it turns out, spending 15 minutes at 21 places would add over 5 hours to our trip. Factoring that in, we made pretty good time. If we had calculated that in advance, we would’ve had a more realistic estimate (and maybe started earlier in the day… I’m not a morning person).
• Have a plan for the bigger cities. Showing up in Jersey City at 10 PM on a Saturday night without a plan of where we wanted to take a photo proved to be stressful. At that point, we were also nearing 12 hours in the car. I thought I wanted to do the photo in Journal Square, but I *really* wanted to do the photo in a square near Grove Street. Make a plan!
• Wawa and QuickChek are the. best. We stopped at numerous Wawas and QuickCheks for gas, reliably fast and decent food, and reliably clean bathrooms.

**This does not include the hour we drove home from Newton or the hour from home to Belvidere… the fact that we needed sleep was purely due to poor planning. If someone else were to attempt this trip, those 2 extra hours wouldn’t be necessary.

My full set of photos is available here: https://flickr.com/photos/robotbrainz/albums/72157702834191012. Most are included in this blog post, but there are a few extras there.

Map Tour of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad (LVRR)

I love love love love love love love PDFs of old books on sites like Archive.org, Google Books, and the Library of Congress. A while back I found one called “Seen from the Train on the Picturesque Lehigh Valley Railroad”. Published in 1895, this book was intended to keep riders informed of their whereabouts as they took the train from NYC (well, Jersey City) to Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

I’ve spent most of my life living along this former railroad (in New Jersey and Pennsylvania), and I really enjoyed reading the 1895 description of several places I lived in/near. While this book is an interesting read, it just isn’t as fun without a train ride. (Soapbox: we need more passenger rail service!!!) But these trains don’t run anymore. And some (most?) of the rail segments are totally gone.

Someday I’d like to make a road trip out of this, and include a present-day photo of each stop. For now, I created a Google Map to act as a guide and provide some context. You can click on any point and read the that town’s description from the book. I hope you enjoy it!



Legend:

• Blue binoculars: Points of interest along or near the route
• Red train engine: Major transfers or junctions with other railroads
• Green circle with a square inside: The western route through the Finger Lakes
• Yellow circle with a diamond inside: The eastern route through the Finger Lakes

PS: If you happen to be a train nerd (I mean that affectionately) and I got something wrong, please let me know!

I'm Not Dead, I Just Moved to New Jersey

Sorry for neglecting this blog.  As the title says: I'm not dead, I just moved to New Jersey.  I hope to get back to posting and maybe even Photo Phriday once I am settled in.  In the mean time, here are photos of the New Jersey themed dinner my boyfriend made for me in celebration of our move.






Yum!

Photo Phriday - 2015 08 07

Part of a hike through a swamp in New Jersey's Cheesequake State Park.

Photo Phriday - 2015 02 27

Train bridge over the Delaware River, between Easton PA and Phillipsburg NJ. Taken from the trail under the Free Bridge on the Easton side of the river.

Also, happy 100th blog post to me! :)

State High Point - New Jersey

New Jersey
High Point State Park
Just southeast of Port Jervis, NY lies the highest point in New Jersey: High Point.  The Appalachian Trail runs right near High Point (1803' above sea level), which is also the highest peak in the Kittatinny Mountains!  From the top you can see three states: New York, Pennsylvania, and of course New Jersey.
I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, so you can read about High Point on Wikipedia!


It was cold and windy up there, so we took a few photos and then took off for Port Jervis.  We went to Len & Jo's and had some delicious pizza.  So many cheeses!  Along the way we stopped for a photo of the "Oldest Church".


And what would Port Jervis be without some cool trains?


Highpointing Swag
If you're interested in buying some stuff to commemorate your high point visits, well, CafePress to the rescue: State Highpoint Swag!

Electric Utility Outage Maps - Hurricane Irene Edition

I love utility maps.  You have been warned. 

A few days after Hurricane Irene took a swing at the east coast I looked at the outage maps for some of the electric utilities there.  I had heard reports of widespread power outages from news channels back east, but I'd also heard from friends that Irene just wasn't as bad as they had expected (they were in PA, which you'll see in a moment wasn't hit as hard as other areas).  These following outage maps show the huge impact the storm had on electric utilities.  The screenshots were taken on August 30th; about 2 days after Irene hit MD, NJ, PA, NY, etc.

Here's Hurricane Irene's path:

Ok!  Let's start in the southern part of the Northeast...


Delmarva Power (DELaware MARyland VirginiA, for those unfamiliar) had just under 2500 customers without power, as of 2 days after the storm. 

Atlantic City Electric, which covers a large portion of southern New Jersey, had over 4000 customers without power.

PSE&G had 40,000+ customers without power
(note: estimated using low end of the key scale).

Jersey Central Power & Light had over 60,000+ customers without power
(note: estimated using low end of the key scale).

Specifically, Monmouth County alone had over 57,000 people without power.

Let's head inland to check out the situation in Pennsylvania.
Met-Ed and PPL both look pretty decent, at least compared to NJ.

Highlighting the hardest hit part of PPL's territory

ConEdison had 33,000+ customers without power.

Here is a roll-over breakdown of where the most affected customers live:

Long Island Power Authority was hit pretty hard as well.

Connecticut Light & Power... This map really shows how hard CT was hit by the storm.  There were a few areas that had 100% of customers without power. 

National Grid

Central Maine Power's website is a bit different. Rather than having an interactive, fairly real-time map of outages, they had a series of images showing outages from 8/28 through 8/30 (when I downloaded information).  I strung their images together in an animation so you can see the change over time, and when the most people were without power.  I apologize for the jumpiness of the image... their maps were all different, and for a quick blog entry I wasn't about to spend hours adjusting each image.  Sorry!

You may need to click through to see the animated image.

If you're still with me, I hope you enjoyed the outage maps!  It was fun to see not only the heavily impacted areas, but also to check out the different types of outage maps electric utilities use on their websites.