The Last Exit
Andy Corliss had not yet been born when the flood of 1955 nearly obliterated the Pennsylvania town of East Stroudsburg where he would one day attend college. In August of that year, the East Coast was hit by not one but two hurricanes. Connie dropped ten inches of rain on the Delaware River valley, followed a week later by an additional ten inches from Diane. Both homes and businesses were swept from their foundations by the onslaught of floodwaters. Far worse than the property damage was the human toll: more than two hundred people died as a result of the storms, seventy-eight of them in Monroe County, Pennsylvania alone.
The following year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began surveying the region with an eye toward constructing a flood-control dam. In 1965 a proposal was placed before Congress to create one at Tocks Island, a small island in the Delaware River, not far from the Delaware Water Gap. In anticipation of the construction of this dam, the federal government acquired land on both sides of the river and forced people out of their homes by exercising eminent domain. In 1974, however, a more economical way of reducing flood damage was presented to the Delaware River Basin Committee; and eventually the Tocks Island dam project was discarded.
Unfortunately, the damage to the communities within the boundaries of the project area had already been done. Families had already moved away, and many of the buildings had been destroyed.
* * *
When Andy was ten years old, his parents sold their house in New York and moved to the Pocono Mountain region of Pennsylvania where real estate prices were substantially lower than in the Big Apple. The Corliss family soon adjusted to the slower paced life of the Poconos, and the young boy made friends with children his own age, most of whom were fellow transplants from New York and New Jersey.
At sixteen, Andy was asked to make important decisions concerning his future. That he would go on to college after graduating high school was expected. What he had to decide was what college he would attend and what degree he would pursue. His guidance counselor suggested he first choose his field of study and then select a good school that offered a degree in that area. While that was sound advice, the problem remained that Andy had no idea what he wanted to do with the rest of his life outside of listening to music, watching horror movies, playing video games and sleeping.
"I don't suppose they offer a degree in urban exploration," he joked when his mother suggested he might study accounting or computer science.
"Urban what?" she asked, taking her seat at the dinner table.
"It's a fancy name for trespassing," his father explained, reaching for the platter of fried chicken drumsticks.
"My friends and I don't vandalize the buildings or paint graffiti on the walls," Andy defended himself. "We just like to see what the old places look like and take photographs."
Mrs. Corliss looked confused.
"What buildings are you talking about?"
"Abandoned places. Around here, it's mostly old hotels left over from the days when the Poconos was the honeymoon capital of the world. But in other areas there are hospitals, asylums, schools, mansions, factories, prisons."
"Like that prison down in Philadelphia you and your cousin went to?" she asked. "What was it called? East something or other."
"Eastern State Penitentiary," Andy answered. "It's kind of like that, but Eastern State is now a tourist attraction. Anybody can pay admission and go inside. It's much more exciting if you ...."
"If you break the law and enter the property illegally," his father jumped in. "It's called trespassing, just like I said. I read in the Pocono Record that kids who try to sneak into the Buck Hill Inn are subject to arrest and a three-hundred-dollar fine."
"You know," Mrs. Corliss suggested, "if you like old buildings so much, you might want to consider becoming an architect."
Andy smiled. His mother was an intelligent, educated woman, but she was incapable of seeing things from her son's perspective.
* * *
With no clear career goals in mind, Andy chose to attend the nearest institution of higher learning: East Stroudsburg University, which was located right in the Poconos.
"Hey, if it was good enough for A.J. Soprano, it's good enough for me," he joked when he announced his college plans to his parents.
"Who's A.J. Soprano?" asked his mother, who if she appeared on Jeopardy would ace questions on literature and history and yet would draw a complete blank if the category were pop culture.
"Just someone on television," her son replied, not bothering to explain any further.
"What are you going to major in?" his father inquired.
"I thought I'd get my general education courses out of the way first, and then in another year or so, choose a major."
Andy had expected the student population of ESU to consist predominantly of kids from the Pocono region. He was therefore surprised to discover how many kids were from outside Pennsylvania. During the first week of his first semester, he made friends with a young man from Boston.
He and Taylor Nesbitt quickly developed a good-natured rivalry. The boy from Boston praised the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Bruins and the Celtics, whereas the former New Yorker lauded the Yankees, the Giants, the Rangers, and the Knicks. It was while they were arguing about the merits of Yankee Stadium versus those of Fenway Park one day during lunch that the boys discovered their strongest bond: urban exploration.
"My older brother went inside Danvers State before they gutted it and erected luxury apartments," Taylor said.
Andy was impressed. The closest he had come to being inside an asylum was going to Pennhurst, once a state school and hospital for the developmentally challenged. And even that experience could not be considered actual exploring since at the time it was a commercial Halloween attraction.
"What places have you visited yourself?" Andy asked.
"Mainly just old houses and abandoned factories, but I did get in to see the Massachusetts State Psychiatric Institute in Boston before they tore it down. How about you?"
"I got into Pocono Gardens Lodge and the Stricklands Mountain Inn while they were still standing. I also got to see the original Mount Airy Lodge before they demolished the building and put up the existing casino."
"So what's there to explore now?" Taylor inquired.
"Here in the Pocono Mountains there are still some old resorts around although many have been torn down. And a lot of kids go across the river to Jersey to see the Paulinskill viaduct and—"
A second-year nursing student who was seated at the next table suddenly interrupted their conversation, asking, "Have either of you ever taken the last exit in New Jersey?"
"Is that the one right before the bridge?" Andy asked.
"Yeah."
"No. Why?"
"There's a town that was deserted back in the Sixties."
"A whole town?" Andy laughed, assuming the girl was pulling his leg.
"It's not really an entire town," she explained. "All that's left is a post office, a small school, a church and a couple of houses."
"No kidding!" Taylor exclaimed, eager to hear more.
"Yeah, I've been there with some friends from Blairstown, New Jersey. The area along the Delaware River wasn't always a national recreation area like it is now. Years ago there were houses all along the river, but then there was a big flood back in the Fifties and lots of people died. In fact, I heard that one of the buildings here at the college was used as a temporary morgue to store the bodies since many of the other buildings in town were washed away. Anyway, the government wanted to build a dam to prevent further flooding, so they bought up the land and evicted the homeowners."
"But there's no dam around here," Andy pointed out.
"I know. The project was eventually shelved, but not before the homeowners had already left. Most of the buildings have been torn down, but Wallpack Center remains."
"Is it hard to find?" Taylor asked.
"Not really. You take the last exit before the bridge, keep following Old Mine Road, and you'll eventually find it."
* * *
"Why would anyone put a traffic signal on a road when there's no intersecting street?" Taylor asked as he and Andy waited at a red light when they turned off New Jersey Exit 1 of Interstate 80, the last exit before crossing the Delaware Water Gap Bridge into Pennsylvania.
"Beats me," the driver replied. "But this has got to be the longest light I've ever seen."
When the red signal finally turned green and Andy continued north along Old Mine Road, the two college students correctly deduced that the light was meant to ensure that cars traveling along the wooded, narrow, single lane road atop the steep embankment came from only one direction at a time.
Andy drove for miles, seeing only a handful of scattered buildings, used seasonally by the park service.
"I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," he joked.
"It seems more like Deliverance country," Taylor quipped. "Incidentally, a little trivia about The Wizard of Oz. Did you know the Scarecrow and Tin Man were both from the Boston area? Ray Bolger was from Dorchester and Jack Haley from Boston."
"Is that so?" Andy responded. "Well, the Cowardly Lion and the Wizard himself were both from New York. Just two of the many great thespians the Big Apple produced."
"Boston and its suburbs have more than their fair share of good actors: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, James Spader, Ed Norton, and Leonard Nimoy, just to mention a few."
"And the list from New York includes Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney—hell, I could go on and on."
"Speaking of going on and on, when are we going to get to this Wallpack?"
"I don't know. That girl said to stay on this road, and eventually we'd come to it."
Nearly an hour later Andy admitted he was hopelessly lost.
"I don't even know if I'm still on Old Mine Road," he confessed. "Maybe I should have veered right at the fork and not gone left."
"Don't worry. I'd have taken the left, too, and kept going along the river."
"Do you wanna turn around and go back?"
Taylor looked at his watch and answered, "It's early yet. It's a nice day out. If you've got enough gas in your tank, let's go a few more miles. After all, we might still be on Old Mine Road."
It was while the two young men were discussing possible plot scenarios in the upcoming season of The Walking Dead that Andy first saw the small white building up ahead. He pulled the Subaru off the road onto what appeared to be a dirt parking lot, and the two men go out of the car.
"This isn't the right place," Taylor announced.
"It must be. The girl said it was the only town left."
"Look at the sign above the post office: it says RIVER'S EDGE, NEW JERSEY."
Andy stood in the center of Main Street and looked around. There was a post office, a school, a church and a handful of homes—none of which appeared to be occupied."
"There can't be two abandoned towns along the Delaware," he reasoned. "Maybe they changed the name of the town to keep the curious away. People looking for Wallpack wouldn't stop if they thought they were in River's Edge. They changed the address on the Amityville Horror house, didn't they?"
"I suppose it's possible," Taylor said, considering the logic of his friend's argument. "But none of these buildings look like any of the abandoned places I've ever been to."
The post office, church, school and houses all appeared to be freshly painted; all were the same color: white with green trim.
"Come on," Andy teased. "You don't honestly think anyone lives here? We're in the middle of nowhere, not a sign of life as far as the eye can see. No cars in the driveways. Look at the post office: it's empty."
"Yeah. You're right. Obviously no one lives here, but still ...."
"What?"
"Word of a place like this spreads. That girl has been here with her friends and then told us about it. How many others know of its existence—regardless of the name on the post office? Dozens of people must have come here to explore—maybe hundreds. Why is there no graffiti on any of the buildings? Why aren't there empty beer bottles or cigarette butts on the ground?"
"You're forgetting one thing. This is federally owned land. It isn't under the jurisdiction of the local police. You get caught vandalizing or defacing property here, and you're answerable to Uncle Sam's park rangers."
Taylor conceded to his friend's arguments. River's Edge—or Wallpack, whatever the case may be—was obviously a ghost town created by the defunct Tocks Island dam project.
"What are you waiting for?" Andy asked with a boyish grin. "We came all this way to see the place; let's explore."
As his friend walked in the direction of the church, Taylor headed across the street to the school, a building so small it was doubtful it held more than three or four classrooms. Only by standing on the tips of his toes and craning his neck as much as possible was he able to peer into the window.
"Hey," he called to his friend at the church. "You've got to see this. I think I've found the graffiti."
When Andy, who was six inches taller than Taylor, looked in through the school window, he was amazed by what he saw: an exquisitely painted, highly detailed mural on the wall.
"That's not graffiti," he insisted. "That's art!"
* * *
Every Memorial Day Andy's father took the Char-Broil gas grill out of the storage shed and rolled it out onto the patio. After spending the long, cold Pocono Mountain winter inside the house, Mrs. Nesbitt was eager to entertain outdoors. Family members and old friends from New York were persuaded by the promise of fresh air and free food and drink to trek across the Garden State and visit the Corlisses in Pennsylvania.
As his father seasoned the steaks and chicken in preparation for the grill and his mother prepared the salads and put the finishing touches on desserts, Andy made himself useful setting up folding chairs and snack trays on the deck.
"Need some help?"
The young student turned to see Amos Stoker, his widowed, elderly next-door neighbor, crossing the lawn with a platter of brownies he had purchased at the nearby Weis Markets.
"No, thank you, Mr. Stoker. I'm just about finished," he replied, taking the dish from the eighty-plus-year-old man. "Won't you have a seat? Can I get you something to drink? Beer? Soda? Iced Tea? Bottled water?"
"Not right now. Maybe a little later. I just finished a cup of coffee."
Amos sat down on a padded lawn chair, putting his feet on the matching ottoman.
"Do you follow baseball?" the old man asked, nodding his head in the direction of Andy's Yankees cap, "or do you only wear that hat as a fashion accessory?"
"I like the game. What about you?"
"I've been a Yankee fan ever since I was a kid. My earliest memories are of going to the stadium with my dad. Ah, those were the good old days. What players we had! DiMaggio, Mantle, Maris, Berra, Rizzuto—I saw them all play."
"Have you been to the new stadium yet?" Andy asked.
Amos laughingly replied, "To me, the one they just tore down was the new stadium. Most of the games I attended were in the original one built in twenty-three. I rarely went after it was remodeled in the Seventies."
"Why?"
"By then I had moved to Pennsylvania. Of course, New York wasn't that much farther than from my home in Jersey, but I was getting too old to make that long drive into the city. It seemed easier—not to mention cheaper—to watch the games on television or listen to them on the radio."
"I never knew you were from New Jersey, Amos," said Mrs. Corliss, who had come from the kitchen carrying bowls of potato salad, macaroni salad, coleslaw and fruit salad. "Based on everything you've told me about the local history of this area, I just naturally assumed you were born and raised right here in the Poconos."
"I practically was. My parents' home was across the Delaware. My wife and I moved into my grandfather's place—right next door—when he died, but then we all had to relocate. God bless eminent domain!"
"You lost your home to the Tocks Island project?" Andy asked with surprise.
"I wouldn't expect a young guy like you to know about that!" Amos exclaimed, equally amazed.
Before the two men could discuss the subject at greater length, a convoy of motor vehicles pulled up in front of the Corliss home.
"It looks like most of our guests have arrived," Mrs. Corliss observed. "Frank, you can put the chicken and steaks on, and Andy, will you help me bring the rest of the food out?"
"Sure, Mom," her son replied and reluctantly headed toward the kitchen.
It was not until after the guests finished the first round of food and he could free himself from his annoying thirteen-year-old cousin that Andy was able to resume his conversation with Amos Stoker.
"Back in October, my friend and I took a long drive along Old Mine Road," he told his neighbor.
"That's the best time to do it," the old man said. "It's beautiful when the leaves turn. Did you go canoeing in the Delaware?"
"No, we went exploring."
"Hiking along the Appalachian Trail, huh?"
"No. We took a drive in my car. We went to a place called River's Edge."
Amos's normally ruddy complexion paled considerably, although Andy thought it looked more green than white.
"We heard about the abandoned town from a fellow student at ESU and decided to check it out ourselves."
"You must mean Wallpack," the elderly neighbor said, the color gradually returning to his cheeks.
"Wallpack and River's Edge. They're one and the same place, aren't they?"
"Not at all," Amos expounded. "Wallpack, although abandoned these many years, still stands. A number of the buildings are used by the Park Service. On the other hand, there's nothing left of River's Edge anymore."
"The town we were in was along the river. There was Main Street—if you could call it that—with a church on one side and a school on the other. There was also a post office on the corner, and three or four houses."
"Sounds like Wallpack to me."
No amount of argument could sway the old man's opinion. He was firm in his belief that, despite the misleading sign, the two college students had visited Wallpack, not River's Edge.
Later that night, after the guests departed, Andy lay in his bed with his laptop on his chest. If he could find a photograph of the Wallpack post office, he could clear up—at least in his own mind—the ambiguity surrounding the name of the town.
The results of his Google search for Wallpack, NJ fascinated him. There were images of a post office, a school, a church and a handful of houses. However, they were definitely not the same post office, school, church and houses that he and Taylor had seen in October.
The town we saw must have been River's Edge, Andy reasoned. Yet Amos swears it was destroyed nearly fifty years ago.
Although the name of a town that consisted of fewer than half a dozen empty buildings was hardly of major importance to anyone, it was a mystery that fascinated him nonetheless.
* * *
The following Saturday Andy again turned off Route 80's Exit 1 onto Old Mine Road. Like the first time, he waited what seemed an inordinate amount of time for the traffic light to turn green. The ride through what Taylor had then humorously referred to as "Deliverance country" seemed even longer than it had on the previous trip—most likely because Andy was alone and had no one to talk to. He wished Taylor were with him now, but his friend had returned to Boston for the summer.
Eventually, he came to the fork in the road, and once again he chose to turn to the left. The suspense intensified as he drove along the wooded road. Finally, he saw the small, white post office up ahead. Andy pulled off onto the same dirt parking area and got out of the car.
"They say seeing is believing," he mumbled as he pointed his handy little Nikon Coolpix camera toward the River's Edge sign above the post office. "When Amos Stoker sees this picture, he'll have to believe me."
He took not one but seven pictures of the abandoned post office and the sign above it, each from a different angle and often using the zoom lens. Then he snapped a dozen more photos of the houses and the "Main Street" sign. While Andy was photographing the school, he heard the sound of a door opening and closing behind him.
The student caught his breath and quickly estimated the distance to the safety of his car before turning to look at the church.
"Hi, there!"
A smile appeared on Andy's face not as much from the sight of the pretty girl as from relief that she was not some crazed killer or one of Deliverance's redneck rapists.
"Hello," he replied. "I didn't realize anyone else was here. I didn't see a car."
"My friends took the Volkswagen into town. I'm Crystal, by the way," she introduced herself.
"Andy."
Crystal appeared to be fifteen or sixteen years old. She had long, straight blond hair, parted in the middle and wore bell bottom pants and a loose-fitting peasant blouse. With the peace sign dangling from her rawhide necklace, she looked like a cast member from the musical Hair.
"Are you going to live here, too?" she asked sweetly.
"No one lives here. This place has been empty for decades."
"The original owners are gone, but my friends and I moved in."
"This land is owned by the National Park Service. If the rangers find out you're here, they'll kick you out."
"That's the establishment for you! They would rather keep perfectly good buildings empty than let people live in them. That's why the world is in the sorry shape it's in."
"You don't strike me as the type of person who's into politics."
Rather than take offense, the girl laughed good-naturedly.
"In this day and age, you have to be. If the bomb is dropped, it will kill us all, not just the warmongers in Washington. That's why we protest the war."
"Protest?"
"Yeah. The friends I'm living with, most of whom are older than I am, used to go to college rallies, but since Kent State they prefer to write songs or poems promoting peace and a withdrawal of our troops from Vietnam."
Suddenly the teenager's unusual wardrobe made sense. Her clothes, protest rallies, Kent State and the war in Vietnam all spoke of the past. The girl was either playing an elaborate joke on him or she was mentally unhinged.
"As for me, I like to paint. I was just working on a mural inside the church when I heard your car drive up."
"Are you the one who did the painting in the school?" Andy asked, remembering the beautiful artwork that adorned the walls there.
"Yeah, have you seen it?"
"Yes. You're very talented."
"Thanks. I want to be an artist someday." Crystal's smile disappeared as she continued, "However, my parents think I ought to go to college and become a nurse or a teacher. That is until I find a husband and stay at home raising children. I can accept that kind of caveman thinking from my father, but not my mother! She ought to be on my side."
Andy was so intrigued by the strange girl that he hadn't noticed the lateness of the hour. When he finally saw the sun hanging low in the west, he looked at his watch.
"I better head home. I'd like to get back onto 80 before it gets dark."
"Well, it was nice meeting you, Andy. Come back again sometime."
"I really hate to leave you here alone."
"Don't be silly!" she laughed. "My friends will be back soon. Besides, I've got to work on my latest masterpiece."
Crystal unexpectedly leaned forward and kissed Andy on the cheek. Then she turned and hurried toward the church. She paused on the top step, and looked across the street at the young man as she opened the door. Andy raised his camera and snapped a photograph. The girl raised her hand and gave him the two-finger "peace" sign before waving goodbye and entering the church. When the door closed behind the young blonde, Andy felt as though she took the brightness of the sun with her.
* * *
The following afternoon, Sunday, Andy knocked on Amos Stoker's door. The old man seemed delighted to see him.
"Come on in. I was just watching the game on YES: Yankees versus Red Sox. I guess you're too young to have a Budweiser with me."
"I never liked the taste of beer anyway," Andy admitted, opting for a can of Coke instead. "I came over to show you some pictures I took."
"Pictures, huh? Of what? Your family's first barbecue of the season?"
"No. River's Edge. I went back there yesterday. The town is still there."
Amos's easy-going temperament immediately changed.
"It's not possible!" he insisted angrily.
"But I saw it. There was a young girl there, too. She was really nice, but a bit odd. She talked like she was living in the Sixties."
"What is this all about?" Amos demanded to know. "What is it you think you know? And what do you hope to get out of that knowledge? I live on social security and a pension; I haven't got a cent to my name."
"I didn't come here for anything. I just want to prove to you that River's Edge exists. Here, see for yourself."
When Amos Stoker looked down at the Nikon's screen and saw image after image of the post office, the houses, the school and the church, he trembled; and when he saw the picture of Crystal on the church steps, he broke down and wept.
"What's wrong, Mr. Stoker?" Andy inquired. "It's just an old town. Why does it upset you so much?"
Amos stared at the young man with incredulity and asked, "You honestly don't know?"
Andy shook his head, bewildered by his neighbor's anguish.
"Not long after I moved to Pennsylvania—back in the fall of 1970—I went to visit family members that still lived in New Jersey, in a town just outside the Tocks dam project area. It was a barbecue—much like the one your family had: hot dogs, burgers, salads, watermelon. While my cousin, his friends and I were talking sports and cars, we went through a few cases of beer."
Amos's hand trembled as he reached for his pack of cigarettes.
"Conversation turned to the time when there were still people living along the Delaware. We talked about how many of the houses had been torn down because of that infernal dam. Then my cousin's friend, Hank, told the others there were squatters living in River's Edge. Mind you, this wasn't the only case. The Park Service had to deal with homeless people taking shelter in the vacant houses on more than one occasion. The rangers would routinely shoo the squatters off, but they kept coming back until the houses were eventually demolished. Yet as far as we were concerned River's Edge was different. The squatters were a group of hippies."
"What's wrong with hippies? It seems to me they would have been peaceful enough."
"You were born in the Nineties. You don't know what it was like back then. They were different from us."
Andy may have been more than sixty years Stoker's junior, but he was mature enough to know that to most people being different was often seen as threatening.
"They burned the American flag," the old man continued. "They took drugs and practiced free love. They mocked our most cherished way of life and our government."
Amos fell silent, and Andy waited patiently for him to continue.
"Maybe things would have turned out differently if we hadn't read all those gory stories in the newspapers about Charles Manson's family of murderous hippies. But we did, and we were scared for our lives and the lives of our families knowing that group was out at River's Edge."
"You can't think all hippies were killers!"
"We weren't about to take chances," Amos declared, defending himself and his friends. "We decided to take matters into our own hands. The best way to get rid of them was to destroy the buildings they were living in."
An icy finger of apprehension traced a path down Andy's spine.
"When the sun went down, we got into an old pickup truck and headed over to River's Edge. We waited there for an hour or so until the squatters got into a Volkswagen bus and drove off. Then we doused the buildings with gasoline and set them on fire. My cousin went back a few days later. There was nothing left but ashes, shards of glass and a few charred boards."
The silence in the room was broken only by Yankees' announcer Michael Kay's commentary on Derek Jeter's at-bat. Finally, the old man wiped the tears from his eyes, blew his nose and concluded his tale.
"A few weeks later I read in the Pocono Record that a young girl had gone missing in the Delaware Water Gap recreation area. The rangers believed she may have drowned in the river, but no body ever washed up. The teenager had been living with those hippies at River's Edge."
Andy felt a pang of guilt when he saw the misery etched on his neighbor's face.
"For more than forty years, I've been wondering if that poor girl ...."
After nearly half a century, Amos Stoker could still not voice his fear. Andy couldn't speak either. Instead, he squeezed the old man's shoulder in a gesture of compassion, for the once hale and hearty octogenarian was suddenly reduced to a frail shell of his former self.
* * *
Andy woke late Monday morning, having had difficulty sleeping the night before. He watched the local news coverage on WNEP while eating a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast. The top stories involved a holdup at a convenience store, proposed construction along I-80 and a possible nurses' strike at Pocono Medical Center. Apparently of less importance to the news desk was word from New Jersey that skeletal remains were discovered along the Delaware in an area that was once the town of River's Edge.
When Andy saw the news footage of overgrown foundations amidst a heavily wooded area, he promptly dropped his spoon into his cereal bowl. He ran up to his room, took the memory card out of his camera and inserted it into his computer. In the images he downloaded, there were no longer any houses, post office, school or church. The photographs matched the video on the newscast: River's Edge was a ruin, having been destroyed by fire back in 1970.
Perplexed, he went to the Pocono Record's website and read the article about the discovery of the body. According to the newspaper, the Park Service received a phone call from an anonymous source suggesting that the remains of Crystal Ramsdell, the young girl who went missing in 1970, would most likely be found there.
Andy immediately assumed that Amos Stoker was the anonymous tipster. However, he would never be able to confirm his suspicions because the old man died peacefully in his sleep the previous night.
In the fall of 2013 my daughter and I took the last exit in New Jersey in search of Wallpack Center. When we didn't find it, we turned around and headed back to Route 80. Then in March 2014, we traveled along the Pennsylvania side of the river, crossed over Dingman's Bridge, and were able to find the town. It's strange to see such an isolated place in the most densely populated state in the country.
Amos should have been happy it was hippies and not cats that moved into River's Edge. Salem and his friends are professional free-loaders.
