I have recently finished reading Robert Sullivan's excellent book, The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of a City. From reading this book, I learned about the many interesting items that can be found or previously could be found in this wilderness/wasteland just a few miles west of New York City. The list includes (in no particular order):
- many of the AM radio transmitters for New York City radio stations;
- abandoned copper mines:
- abandoned clay pits previously used for digging up clay to make bricks;
- salt hay farms;
- failed land development schemes;
- the cities of Newark and Secaucus (to name only two);
- garbage dumps (both in use and no longer in use) containing such items as rubble from the London Blitz, leachate (the liquid that trash makes after it has sat for a while), and fires (both above and underground);
- toxic waste, including, but not limited to, mercury, chromium, naphthalene, methylene chloride, toluene, and ethylbenzene;
- hunters, fishers, and swimmers;
- sports facilities for professional sports teams;
- highways and railways;
- lunatic asylums;
- organized crime murder victims (including, possibly, Jimmy Hoffa - pictured below);
- hotels;
- factories;
- pig farms;
- chemical and oil refineries;
- piles of coal;
- hills made from garbage;
- the Kearny, NJ Library, which boasts of having the world's largest collection of foriegn-language translations of Gone With The Wind;
- soccer stars, including John Harkes, Tab Ramos, and Tony Meola;
- cedar forests;
- mosquitoes;
- buried pirate treasure; and
- the ruins of the original Penn Station from New York City.
Above, the Meadowlands; below, Jimmy Hoffa.
