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.

Exploring Rural New Mexico: Raton, Capulin Volcano, Folsom, and Clayton

As some of you may know, I recently bought a new camera (comment below if you want the backstory).  What better way to learn and test the new camera than a road trip?  The boyfriend has recently been working on a project regarding the Santa Fe Trail, and heard about an extinct volcano in northeastern New Mexico.  Let's go!

We left Denver Friday evening, stopped at our favorite Jamaican restaurant in Colorado Springs (Jamaican Flavor, go there!) for dinner, and spent the night in Trinidad, CO.  Saturday morning we left Trinidad in search of breakfast in Raton, NM.  It appears as though Raton has seen better days.  Most restaurants and businesses along the main drag are either out of business, boarded up, or open with very limited hours.  Fortunately, there is one place that is definitely open: the Oasis Restaurant.  The Yelp reviews may be iffy, but I will tell you that breakfast is delicious!  Homefries, egg sandwich, ham, green chile*... all good!  The staff is very friendly.  Next time I'm in NM I'd like to spend some time in Raton learning about its history.

*Colorado likes to pretend that it knows what's up with green chile, but the truth is that green chile is a New Mexican dish.  I'm just going to throw this out there: New Mexico makes better green chile.  Now you know.  :)


Capulin Volcano National Monument

Full of delicious breakfast we set out towards the Capulin Volcano.  A volcano in New Mexico?  Yes!  It is very well preserved, thanks in part to the plants that now live on the volcano and help prevent erosion.  There are trails around the rim of the volcano and down into the vent (remember: extinct volcano).  The rim trail provides an excellent view of other volcanoes in the area, as well as nearby towns, roads, and railroads.

Approaching the volcano	Inside the vent!
Volcanic New Mexico	Lichen on volcanic rock
Grasslands on the extinct volcano	Baby Capulin

If you are at all interested in geology, volcanoes, or historic land forms, check out Capulin!


Folsom, NM

After spending some time at Capulin we decided to drive through Folsom, just to see what was there.  We heard it was a ghost town, but there was a lot going on!  We stopped at the Folsom Museum to learn about the town's history.  For a town that might fit the description "the middle of nowhere", there's actually a lot of history.  There was also an arts/crafts sale going on outside of the historic Folsom Hotel, and they were preparing for a concert later in the evening.  As with any town of this size (56 people!), the locals quickly noticed that we were outsiders.  We talked to a few people, all of whom were very friendly and wanted to share their town's history with us.  Several people asked what brought us to town, and we told them that we stopped because we heard about the old historic district and were curious.  We were told that one resident volunteered to fix up (paint, rebuilt, clean, etc) the historic district.  If you compare my photos to others on flickr, you can see that she has done a great job!

A train in Folsom	Switchboard used to warn residents of the deadly 1908 flood
The Folsom business  district is looking good!	The Folsom Hotel

For comparison, here is a photo (by Flickr user CourtHouseLover) of the Folsom business district in 2009:

To read more about Folsom's history, check out this site: Folsom Museum - Folsom Area History and these Wikipedia articles about George McJunkin and Black Jack Ketchum.


Clayton, NM

Our next stop was in Clayton, which is about an hour away from Folsom.  With a population of nearly 3000 people, Clayton is much larger than Folsom.  We weren't planning to stop, but decided to check it out when we saw the Herzstein Museum in an old church.  The museum's curator was very friendly, and told us about some of the exhibits.  The museum covers Clayton's shared history with Folsom as well as some things unique to Clayton.

The Herzstein Museum	Hooray for New Mexico!
A shorthand dictionary	East of Clayton

The Rest of the Trip

From Clayton we continued on to Amarillo.  We visited Cadillac Ranch, Palo Duro Canyon, and made friends at a restaurant/wine bar called Crush.

On Sunday we headed north, stopped at the TX/OK state line, visited a grocery store in Boise City OK, and continued onward.  Of course we had to stop at my favorite restaurant in Lamar (List: Things I Never Thought I'd Say): Thai Spicy Basil.

Overall, a fun weekend of exploring!


Map

Typically I'd embed a map here, but the new Google Maps won't allow me to do so without changing my map to "Public".  So instead here is the not-public-but-viewable-by-anyone-with-the-link map.  Sorry it isn't embedded; go complain to Google.