Friday, September 11, 2015
This is our only free day to check out the Delaware Water Gap.  This area of land was set aside by Congress in 1962, with the proposal to build a dam upstream to control the flooding of the Delaware River due to hurricanes passing through the area.  Many small farms were bought up, and some people resisted, holding out selling, in hopes of staying there.  With the war costs of Vietnam escalating, President Johnson felt compelled to stop the construction of the dam.  He also had to deal with the squatters on the now vacant farms, as family communes and flower children began living along the Delaware in the abandoned houses.  Others set up tents and teepees.  Many Poconos residents, resent the 'hippies' cultivating marijuana and living in the homes that they had to vacate.  In 1973 a judge ruled the squatters were illegally occupying the valley and ordered to vacate within 30 days.  I checked out how close Woodstock was to this area, and it's not far! Today the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is a 70,000 acre national jewel with more than 10,000,000 visitors each year.  We struck off this morning and wanted to get a taste of what was here!  Five waterfalls, Grey Towers, which is on the Register of National Historic Sites,  and the monument at High Point State Park.  I'll start with Grey Towers, which was the home of the Chief Forester of the newly created United States Forest Service, and is the only private residence that the U.S. Forest service maintains. Gifford Pinchot was appointed by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt and under his leadership, the national forests more than tripled in size to more than 170 million acres.  He later became governor of PA for two terms.

This is Grey Towers, that was built in 1886 by James Pinchot, father and philanthropist, who acquired enough fortune to retire at age 44.  In 1963, Gifford Bryce Pinchot, the son of Gifford and Cornelia, donated Grey Towers and the 102 acres to the USDA Forest Service.

       This is a small 'lounging pool' on the grounds of the Grey Towers estate.  It was quite inviting!

We were on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware Water Gap today, and we're back to all the beautiful waterfalls, that the state has to offer.  I won't bore you with every one we saw, as we felt they just kept getting better each time.  We hiked to them all, but they weren't long distances, and many were on boardwalks.  PA is a beautiful state!  This particular one was 4 feet shorter than Niagara Falls.  My pictures don't do justice to what we saw.

The High Point State Park is the highest spot in the state of NJ, and the top of the monument placed there, by Colonel Kuser and his wife, stands 1803 feet above sea level.  The monument is a memorial in honor of all NJ wartime heroes and it is 220 feet tall. It was built between 1928 - 1930.  The Kuser's donated their home and 102 acres of land to be designated a state park.  Their home is being used as the park office.