The long, skinny state
of NEW JERSEY has been at the heart of US history since the Revolution ,
when a battle was fought at Princeton , and George Washington spent
two bleak winters at Morristown . As the Civil War came, the state's
commitment to an industrial future ensured that, despite its
border location along the Mason-Dixon line, it fought with the
Union.
That commitment to industry
has doomed New Jersey in modern times. Most travelers only see
"the Garden State" (so called for the rich market garden
territory at the state's heart) from the stupendously ugly New
Jersey Turnpike toll road which, heavy with truck traffic, cuts
through a landscape of gray smokestacks and industrial estates.
Even the songs of Bruce Springsteen , Asbury Park's golden boy,
paint his home state as a gritty urban wasteland of empty lots,
gray highways, lost dreams and blue-collar tragedy. The majority
of the refineries and factories hug only a mere fifteen-mile-wide
swath along the turnpike, but bleak cities like Newark , home to the major airport, and
Trenton , the capital, do little to improve
the look of the place and the state suffers from a major image
problem.
But there is more to New
Jersey than factories and pollution. Alongside its revolutionary
history, Thomas Paine and Walt Whitman both wrote nostalgically
of the happy years they spent there; while the northwest corner
near the Delaware Water Gap is traced with picturesque lakes,
streams and woodlands. Best of all, the Atlantic shore offers
many bustling resorts, from the tattered glitz of Atlantic
City to the glorious
kitsch of Wildwoods and the old-world charm of Cape May.
THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA