MOUNT HOLLY’S HISTORY IN PAVERS

History Under Our Feet Given New Life By Residents

If you have ever had the jarring experience of riding over “cobblestone” streets in Philly you will understand why Mount Holly chose to roll asphalt over its riverstone pavers. We chose the smooth ride of asphalt over the quaint beauty of river rock.

But that history is still just beneath the surface and today as NJ American Water was working at Bispham Street, those colonial era pavers where brought to the surface. They are just a few inches down as you can see from the photo below.

The same sort of rocks were unearthed on Buttonwood street some years back when NJ American was replacing its water mains. I used those to create a little path on my property. And, it would appear that other Mount Holly residents used unearthed pavers from Pine street some decades ago to create retaining walls. Historian Larry Tigar believes that the stones may be from the flood-control diversion excavations in the 1940s, which he recalls made a mess of Pine Street for a while. The retaining wall at Saint Andrews cemetery and multiple small nearby retaining walls for homes have river rock as the building material. Larry recalled that during his childhood, the last street in town to still have rock pavers was Paxon.

Going back to the beginnings of our town, my historical readings indicate that the first paving of Pine Street was a wooden “Corduroy Road”. That’s nothing more than slender logs laid out side by side, which must have been an even worse ride than the river stone.

For a time during the 1900s, High Street had the distinction of being known as the “Yellowbrick Road” due to its extra large brick pavers [see below]. About 10 years ago, Mount Holly conducted some road work and excavated a number of these pavers which were put to use by a liquor store then known as “Red White and Brew” to create a patio. The Yellowbrick Road was apparently paved over sometime in the 1950s.