From Kwajalein to Highlands

With the temperatures in the 90s, it’s a good time to visit Hartshorne Woods and the historic former Air Force installation at the top of Portland Road. in Highlands.

Walking through the Battery to see the  gun barrel from the Battleship New Jersey in place.  Battery  Lewis guarantees you’ll be in temperatures in the 70s in this casement corridor hidden in the hills of Highlands.  This is a story I wrote four years ago when the barrel arrived after a long trip from Norfolk, Va. To its new home at Rocky Point

A piece of the Battleship New Jersey, BB62, is an intricate vision and a striking spectacle as part of the Monmouth County Park System’s Hartshorne Woods in Highlands and Middletown.

The weapon is part of Battery Lewis, one of the two batteries built at the former Army site at the top of the Highlands hill during World War II as the main defense for New York Harbor. The site, known as Rocky Point, is part of an educational exhibit highlighting the area’s involvement and importance in World War II.

Battery Lewis is a 600’ long casement battery, with two 16” caliber gun emplacements connected by a corridor housing ammunition storage and powder rooms. It is the only 16” gun battery in the state and is constructed of steel and thick reinforced concrete covered by earth.

The Battery was designed to withstand battleship and aerial attacks and had two 16” Navy Mk11 M1 guns on Army carriages mounted in it in May 1943. The guns placed in Battery Lewis were originally designed for mounting on Navy battleships and are able to fire armor-piercing projectiles 16 inches in diameter and weigh more than two tons, with a range stretching from Point Pleasant Beach to Long Beach, NY.

In 2016, the Monmouth County Park System began extensive planning for repairs and improvements to prepare Battery Lewis for interpretation and public visitation. The first phase of work, restoring the concrete on the two casemate canopies and wing walls, was funded by the Friends of the Parks; the site itself, originally known as the Navesink Military Reservation, was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places and designed so that visitors can walk from one end of the battery to the other, explore the rooms within it and learn through exhibits and guided tours about the coastal defenses of the United States.

The final phase of Battery Lewis restoration included interior repairs, utility and drainage improvements and the display of the gun barrel. Exhibits, in addition to the rooms off the corridor and the gun barrel, focus on the military past of the area, as well as the unique geography and landscape of Highlands, the Hartshorne legacy and the creation of Hartshorne Woods Park. Exhibits also include an overhead trolley showing the steel ammunition service, artifacts, including 16-inch projectiles donated by the Battleship New Jersey Museum in Camden, historical photographs and reminiscences of veterans who served at the site.

The Board of Recreation Commissioners authorized application to the Navy Inactive Ships Program at Norfolk, Va. to acquire one of the barrels from the Battleship New Jersey, BB62, to replace the original gun that was there in the 1940s and subsequently dismantled and removed. The Navy subsequently approved that application and arranged for the transport of the barrel to the county park. In place in the battery, the gun helps tell the story of the park land’s military past and Battery Lewis blended with an overview of all of the park’s history and landscape.

The former Army site, later an Air Force base during the Korean conflict, was part of the Hartshorne estate and was purchased by the government in 1942 because of its elevation and location at the southern entrance to New York harbor. Over the next two years, the army reservation was built as part of Harbor Defense headquartered at Sandy Hook, for the purpose of denying enemy ships access to New York Bay. After World War II, the guns were removed at all coastal batteries, including Battery Lewis, cut up on site and sold as scrap metal. Troop housing and a 100-foot observation tower were also demolished by the Army before the property became the Highlands Air Force Station, later the Highlands Army Air Defense Site, from 1949 to 1974.

When the 224-acre property was declared surplus, the government authorized two no-cost transfers to Monmouth County in 1974 and 1984. The entire Hartshorne Woods County Park, which stretches from Highlands to Middletown along Navesink Avenue, is 787 acres in size and receives more than a quarter of a million visitors a year.

The arrival of BB62’s gun for the army emplacement caused flurries of excitement for many days, drawing large crowds along the way from its storage in Norfolk, Virginia to its new home at Rocky Point. The trip included not only train and truck, but three cranes, one in Virginia, two in New Jersey, a flurry of permits authorizing the travel along the way, road surveys, police escorts, and numerous other details; it was completed at a cost of $180,000, culminating a project that had begun four years earlier.

The original 16” Navy Mark 7-gun barrel began its journey by train from Virginia to South Amboy, then transferred to another train for an arrival in Red Bank, where he was placed in the Conrail rail yard on Central Avenue until arrangements were completed for the next leg of its journey. The 65’ long gun barrel was then transported by tractor trailer along Route 35 to New Monmouth Rd., then over to Route 36 for access to Hartshorne Woods Park via Portland Rd.

Ironically, when the gun barrel from the Battleship New Jersey made its final turn off the state highway before advancing up the hill to its new home at Hartshorne Woods Park, it passed within feet of the Captain Joseph Azzolina Bridge, formerly the Highlands -Sea Bright Bridge.

The bridge was named for Highlands native and former Naval officer and State Senator and Assemblyman Joseph Azzolina who served aboard the USS New Jersey and was instrumental in bringing the ship back to the Garden State as a museum.  The ship is the most decorated battleship for combat actions in American history and served in every war from World War II until she was decommissioned in 1991 after 21 years of active service, a Navy Unit Commendation and 19 battle and campaign stars.