The Ruins of Fries Mill

and an unprovoked attack

On the first day this year to nearly touch eighty degrees, I went for a drive into the southern end of Pine Barrens looking for the ruins of Fries Mill. There I met some friendly hikers, and nearly crashed the car after something attacked me on the road.

Unlike my previous excursion to the Ruins of Friendship, this was easily reached from a parking spot near an abandoned rail line, which gave the area a post-apocalyptic feel. A lot of the Pine Barrens has that feeling, as it has been inhabited and abandoned over and over again for centuries. Buildings disappear, bricks scavenged to make another. Parks spring up around old furnaces. Forest fires scorch the trees and life begins anew.

A vandalized train car blocked one side of the tracks, but the side leading to the ruins was open. I walked the right-of-way for a mile before I saw other people far along up the straight track. It wasn’t apparent that this side of the rail line was abandoned as well, until I encountered this faded sign in the middle of the tracks:

Look how the trees bend in the wind

A mat of clouds covered the sky, and the wind never stopped blowing, making the summery heat bearable. The wind beat the swamps into hammered pewter, the grass bleached and gray. I met a Mutt & Jeff pair as they headed back to the road. Pierced, black t-shirts, cargo shorts. The big, hairy one could have been me as a teenager. We grunted greetings and kept going.

After I crossed a short bridge and the famous “sugar sand” of the Pine Barrens appeared on either side of the tracks, and I saw peeks of open sky through the trees, which in the pines, usually means one thing: a blue hole. There’s something eerie about a Blue Hole.

Beneath the sugar sand soil layer of the pines is limestone, which gives the water a vibrant blue or aqua green hue. But the sand is shot through with iron, so you also get a tawny red at the shoreline, or in puddles and creeks. It gives the whole area a strange tint, which along with the homogenous forest of young pines makes for an odd palette. They are beautiful, deceptively deep, even from shore, and very cold. They claim the lives of swimmers every year.

But blue holes are so out of place and beautiful—like a tiny Caribbean sea hiding in the forest—that they always bring me joy. Even when I have to hike a quarter mile on a humped trail to get to it. Here I found my first relics of the abandoned concrete factory far up the line—a rusted underground tank sticking up through the soil, and the wreck of an ‘80s sedan painted a dark blue, crushed and buried:

You can see the steering wheel below the purple Tweety bird painted on the oil tank.

I pumped up the photo saturation to get the water to the right color. The dull lighting made it difficult. It’s tough to get the color of a blue hole any day, but cloudy skies turn them into regular old lakes in photographs.

I didn’t find anything that I was looking for, but I found plenty that I wasn’t. Which makes for a good hike. Supposedly there’s a “horseshoe trail” that leads to the lake and a fallen chimney ruin, but I couldn’t find it. And I had two phones and a GPS with me.

What didn’t help was that I was following vague directions from a website, and using my phone with Google Maps to judge my distance from the grid of concrete. And I lost signal ninety minutes into my trek. I didn’t let that stop me. The directions said I’d find pavement under sand, and I did, and followed it into the woods. All I found were more trails, and no evidence of the torn-down factory, or the collapsed chimney. I did find the concrete foundations of a demolished building that had been turned into a graffiti space:

On the way back, I found another blue hole that looked more like sandy beach resort. It was worth the detour to see it. The acidic waters here don’t make for good fishing; supposedly there’s pickerel, smallmouth bass, and a rare variety of perch that only lives here. I’ve never seen anyone out fishing in a blue hole, but I’m tempted to see what comes out of them. Maybe to take a swim. But not when I’m alone.

A bit oversaturated, but accurate enough.

The hike back was long. When I had signal again, I called ahead to Sugar Hill Subs, which Pete Genovese, the state newspaper’s food columnist, said was one of the best sub sandwich joints around. He didn’t steer me wrong. Several years ago, I road on the “Munchmobile” with him and a few other lucky readers. He knows the state like few others do. I ordered a “Taste of Philli,” which was thinky sliced roast pork, well marinated, with smoked provolone and roasted peppers. I devoured it before I made it back to the Atlantic City Expressway.

But not before I heard a bang from the front of the car. Then a loud rattling. I quickly pulled over and hit the amber flashers, and took a second to breathe. I checked the windows for an impact, then went out to check the tires. They were solid. I flattened out to look under the chassis. There was a large screwdriver sticking out of the undercarriage.

10 EEEE hiking shoe for scale.

I was able to pull it out. It was still in good shape. I must have hit it, and made it bounce up in just the right angle to lodge itself in a hole in the frame, leaving the handle banging between the asphalt and the body. I checked the tire pressure before hitting the road again, with my new heavy duty flat head on the seat next to my sandwich.

I’m not sure I ever found the true ruins of Fries Mills. Or that I’ll go back and look. There are more promising ruins deeper into the pines. My friend Dennis Tafoya told me about the Brooksbrae Terracotta Brick Factory, the ruins of which are covered in graffiti, like the roads of Centralia in Pennsylvania, abandoned when the coal mine beneath the town caught fire. Maybe I’ll share my adventure visiting Centralia next time.

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