The Cedar Bridge Tavern
The local haunt of stagecoach travelers, drinkers, and yes - even a botanist from time to time.
First an account that probably predates the photos by just a few years.
The hotel looks just what it was. The clearing around it has protected it from forest fires that came dangerously near. Across the way, at the other side of the yard and close by the bridge, is a garage and chicken house which served as a bowling alleys and game rooms when stagecoaches brought guests to the hotel.
...and legend says it was haunted....
"I ain't never seen the ghost," Sweeney told us, when we asked him. "But old Sam Traux used to tell me about it." "He used to say that no matter how many times he made sure to put the light out, he would wake up and find it lit - bright and early, some mornings."
Although the ghost was never identified, he could be one of many who figured in sudden death at the Cedar Bridge Hotel.
John Wildermith fell downstairs and died of a broken neck. "Shorty" Loveless came in one night, complained of not feeling well, and died within the hour. And it was to the hotel that they brought a renowned country auctioneer when he died of wounds suffereed when somebody's gun was mysteriously discharged on a gunning trip.
excerpts from: More Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey. Hanry Charlton Beck. 1936. Rutgers University Press
A historical record of the structure....
The Cedar Bridge Tavern was of course an inn. Here is what it looked like in 1938......a view from the northwest.
The living room fireplace.
The interior bar.
The barroom fireplace. Can't you just picture a big table in this room. Somebody comes in after a long day of botanizing, ordering a drink, and then sits down to prepares his press boards. Here is a Hudsonia, here is a Kalmia, gee that looks odd (a Corema conradii type specimen)........
Turns out our historical chroniclers even roughed out a map (all the pictures and images are from the United States archives.)
As best I can figure, the actual location is here (the triangle the roads form in the map above does not correspond to the triangle you see below, just to let you know). That base of the Y that is at the bottom left side of the picture is the road that goes to Warren Grove.
A little closer seems to show, according to the name, that the old road is the old stagecoach route road.
Finally, an even closer view shows someone is living in the spot where I think the inn was. The tavern appears to be gone. Could you imagine the gray area at the bottom of this image, due south of the two cleared grassy areas, is a patch of Corema? How weird would that be. It has a few trees and some four-wheeler tracks through it, just like the tower road site. Redfield could not have missed something like that....could he?.....unless it had just recently been destroyed by a fire when he visited.
