Burlington County Buzz

A weekly look around Burlington County.

Issue 1 - A boardwalk on the Rancocas and the woman who tamed the blueberry

Hey, neighbor. Welcome to the very first Burlington County Buzz. Every Tuesday I'll send one email about life around here, from the river towns along Route 130 out through Moorestown and Marlton and back into the Pines past Medford and Pemberton. This first one is a bonus issue that runs through Election Day, Tue Nov 3. Halloween's on a Saturday and the clocks fall back Sunday night, so you get one extra hour this weekend. I've got plans for it.

What's in this one

1

Hot picks · Costumed dogs take over downtown Mount Holly, the old county jail on High Street does ghost tours, and Bordentown's historical society walks you through the cemetery.

2

Field guide · How to walk the Rancocas Nature Center's three miles of trail in Westampton while the meadows are gold.

3

The scrap · Medford's red fox meets a pile of wrapping paper, and a Moorestown dad's Halloween T-shirt from 2009.

4

What's building · Plain-English explainers for the local questions on your Nov 3 ballot in Burlington City, Bordentown, Delran and Pemberton.

5

Makers · The county's juried art show turns 50 with a free reception at Smithville on Friday.

6

Deep cut · Whitesbog, the Pemberton Township cranberry village where Elizabeth White and the Pine Barrens woodsmen tamed the blueberry.

7

Season · The county farmers market's Halloween Saturday in Moorestown, and the last hayrides at Johnson's Corner.

Hot picks

This weekend's best bets around here.

Halloween's on a Saturday, so Mount Holly gets a dog parade by day and a ghost tour in the old jail by night. Bordentown saves its cemetery stories for Sunday afternoon.

Event flyer for the Mount Holly Fall Fest and Howl-o-ween Pet Pawrade, Oct. 31, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., downtown Mount Holly, with paw prints and pumpkins.

Flyer: Main Street Mount Holly

Mount Holly · Sat Oct 31 · 11am-4pm · free to attend

Fall Fest and the Howl-o-ween Pet Pawrade in downtown Mount Holly

Main Street Mount Holly and Mill Race Village throw a Fall Fest downtown on Saturday with a costumed pet parade, a vendor market and stuff for the kids. Register your pet through the link on the event page. The organizers say "bragging rights are forever," which is a lot of pressure to put on a dachshund in a hot dog bun. Main Street Mount Holly

A round enamel badge reading Historic Burlington County Prison Museum, 1811, with two crossed skeleton keys inside a ring of chain links.

Image: Historic Burlington County Prison Museum

Mount Holly · Fri Oct 30 and Sat Oct 31 · evenings, tickets online only

Spirits and Spooks at the Historic Burlington County Prison Museum

The old county jail at 128 High Street runs a guided ghost tour inside the museum, with a Halloween party in the courtyard that has vendors, a DJ, food trucks and face painting. Friday and Saturday are the last two nights. Tickets are online only and limited, and the listing and the flyer don't agree on start times, so check prisonmuseum.net before you go. I'm told the cells have heard every excuse already, so don't bother with yours. Main Street Mount Holly · Prison Museum

Graveyard Chronicles flyer from the Bordentown Historical Society, with old headstones and a lantern, reading October to November 2026, tickets $25.

Flyer: Bordentown Historical Society

Bordentown Township · Sun Nov 1 · two afternoon sessions · $25

Graveyard Chronicles at Bordentown Cemetery

The Bordentown Historical Society walks you through Bordentown Cemetery and tells the stories of the people buried there, like the painter Susan Waters and Annie Longshore Reeder, a Civil War nurse. The tours meet at the gate lodge on Cemetery Lane and are capped at 20 people each. The society's page lists Sunday's sessions at 2pm and 3:30pm, but its October times were different, so confirm yours when you register. It's the only tour this weekend where the ghosts have footnotes. Bordentown Historical Society

Field guide

One useful guide to living around here.

A wooden boardwalk curves through tall marsh grass beside a calm creek, with a line of trees on the far bank. Hatch illustration.

Rancocas Nature Center · 794 Rancocas Road, Westampton (inside Rancocas State Park)

Rancocas Nature Center - three miles of trail along the creek in Westampton

If you live anywhere near Mount Holly, you've crossed Rancocas Creek a hundred times on the way to somewhere else. The Rancocas Nature Center is where you stop and actually walk it. It's on Rancocas Road in Westampton, about 1.8 miles east of I-295 Exit 45A, with about three miles of trail through meadows and woods and a boardwalk over the wet ground near the creek.

The trails at the Rancocas Nature Center are open every day until dusk, and the center asks for a small suggested donation. Leave the dog and the bike at home, because neither is allowed. The visitor center, which has the restrooms and the trail maps, keeps short hours: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, noon to 4. If you want a guide, the center runs an interpretive trail hike Sunday at 1:30.

The full guide has where to park, the 100-meter pace course on the boardwalk, the orienteering markers for kids who are bored of "just walking," and the farm that used to be under all of it.

Read the field guide

The scrap

The best stuff you missed in the area's social media world.

Two this time: a fox in Medford, and a Moorestown family whose Halloween hot dog tradition may be in its last year at their house.

A red fox chews crumpled wrapping paper and then sprawls out on the pile. Animated.

Medford · TikTok

"Ember check point!"

Ember rips into the wrapping paper and then lies down in the mess, which is my Christmas morning. TikTok

via @cedarrunwildlife

A pencil-hatch drawing of two kettle grills on a lawn by a wooden fence, hot dogs on one and buns on the other, a foil tray of hot dogs on a folding table, and a plain T-shirt hanging from a post.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Moorestown · Moorestown Sun

"Halloweenies on Hot Dog Hill has become a Moorestown tradition"

An 8-year-old wrote "Halloweenies" on her dad's shirt in permanent marker, and he's still grilling in it. Moorestown Sun

via Moorestown Sun / South Jersey Media, by Michelle Mangiamele

What's building

What's going up, getting paused, or getting fought over.

A handful of towns have their own questions on the Tue Nov 3 ballot, on top of the races. Here's what each one asks, in plain English, so nothing on the back of the ballot surprises you.

An unmarked wooden ballot box sits on the grass of a riverside green, with a bench, a big tree and a row of brick houses along the water. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Burlington City · Tue Nov 3 · polls 6am-8pm

Burlington City's open space trust fund question

Burlington City asks whether to set up a Municipal Open Space, Recreation, and Historic Preservation Trust Fund, paid for with a property tax of up to 2 cents per $100 of assessed value. The ballot's own example is $30 a year on a home assessed at $150,000. The money could only go to buying and keeping up land for recreation and conservation, preserving historic properties, and paying debt on those purchases, and the tax runs no more than 10 years unless voters extend it. A yes lets the city create the fund and the tax, and a no means no fund is created. The ballot's interpretive statement says the question gives city officials "the sentiment of the voters." Read the full text before you go. Sample ballot (PDF) · Burlington County sample ballots

A three-story brick school building with scaffolding on one section, an empty paved schoolyard and a low fence in front. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Bordentown City, Bordentown Township and Fieldsboro · Tue Nov 3 · polls 6am-8pm

The Bordentown Regional school bond question

The Bordentown Regional School District asks voters to approve $86,107,900 in bonds for renovations and upgrades at five schools. The ballot breaks it down as $29,374,000 for the high school, $19,396,500 for the middle school, $9,980,900 for MacFarland Intermediate, $10,690,500 for Clara Barton Elementary and $16,666,000 for Peter Muschal Elementary. It also says state debt service aid covers 40 percent of the annual debt payments on those costs. A yes lets the board borrow up to that amount for the listed projects, and a no means it can't issue these bonds. It's on the ballot in Bordentown City, Bordentown Township and Fieldsboro. Sample ballot (PDF) · Burlington County sample ballots

A fire engine with a hose reel on its side sits in an open firehouse bay in daylight, with safety posts by the door. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Delran and Bordentown Township · Tue Nov 3 · polls 6am-8pm

Two fire district questions about new pumpers

Delran's Fire District No. 1 asks whether it can spend up to $1,500,000 on a new foam pumper truck to replace its current one, which the ballot says is 24 years old. The district would pay for it with bonds or other financing, minus any capital money it already has set aside. The ballot's interpretive statement says a yes lets the district spend up to $1.5 million and finance some or all of it, and a no means it can't buy the new pumper.

Bordentown Township's Fire District No. 1 has its own version. It asks whether the commissioners can spend up to $1,200,000 on a pumper and the equipment to put it in service, paid for starting with the 2027 district budget through capital money, notes, bonds or a lease with an option to buy. The ballot says it would replace a 1998 KME pumper engine that has become obsolete and too expensive to repair, and that the old truck would be sold or traded in to offset the cost. A yes authorizes the spending and a no doesn't. It's on the ballot for voters in that fire district. Sample ballot (Delran) · Sample ballot (Bordentown Twp) · Burlington County sample ballots

A low tan municipal building with a flagpole beside a two-lane road under a blue sky.

Photo: Mr. Matté, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Pemberton Township · Tue Nov 3 · polls 6am-8pm

Pemberton Township's charter study question

Pemberton Township voters get this one, word for word: "Shall a charter commission be elected to study the charter of the Township of Pemberton and to consider a new charter or improvements in the present charter and to make recommendations thereof?" There's no dollar amount on the ballot. A yes creates a commission to study the township's form of government and recommend changes, and it doesn't change anything by itself. A no means no commission. The ballot also lists people running for seats on that commission, so read the whole page. Sample ballot (PDF) · Burlington County sample ballots

Makers

Local makers nights and market tables worth hitting.

The county's juried art show turns 50 this year, and Friday's free reception at Smithville is the best night to see it.

A painted still life of carnival masks, a tasseled cord and red and blue spheres on a draped table.

Photo: Burlington County

Eastampton (Historic Smithville Park) · Fri Oct 30 · reception 5-7pm · free

The 50th Burlington County Juried Art Show reception at the Smithville Mansion Annex Gallery

The county throws a 50th anniversary reception for its juried art show Friday evening at the Smithville Mansion Annex Gallery, 803 Smithville Road, with music, light refreshments and a short ceremony. Nearly 90 artists are in it this year. If you go earlier, the Worker's House Gallery in the same park has "Alternate Paths: The Printed Image," a printmaking and book arts show, open Friday and Saturday afternoons. Gallery hours are listed two different ways, so check before you go on another day. Best in Show went to a painting called "Carnavale X," and I'm already annoyed I didn't name my kid that. Burlington County · County calendar

Deep cut

One local history leftover worth knowing.

A highbush blueberry branch heavy with berries in the foreground, a sand road running between flat bogs to a line of pines, and a round gauge with a hole in it resting on a fence post. Hatch illustration.

Whitesbog Village · Whites Bog Road, Browns Mills (Pemberton Township), in Brendan T. Byrne State Forest

Whitesbog - the Pemberton Township cranberry village where the blueberry got tamed

Every summer I eat my body weight in blueberries and never once wondered where the farmed kind came from. It turns out it came from Whitesbog, a sand-road cranberry village in Pemberton Township near Browns Mills, and from a woman named Elizabeth White who had a very specific idea about who to ask for help.

In 1911 White read a government botanist's report on blueberries and offered her family's farm for his experiments. Then she went to the people who knew the Pine Barrens best, the local pickers and woodsmen, and paid them to find the biggest wild berries in the woods. Whitesbog's test fields grew those bushes, and in 1916 the first commercial crop of cultivated blueberries left the farm.

The full story has the little aluminum gauge she handed out, the bushes she named after the men who found them, and how to walk Whitesbog's bogs yourself.

Archival black-and-white photo marked 1920: a man and a woman in wide-brimmed hats stand in rows of low leafy bushes, working at a cloth-covered frame set over one bush, with a flat field and a tree line behind.

Whitesbog, 1920. Photo: Whitesbog Preservation Trust.

Read the deep cut

Season

What's in the air right now. Farm stands, orchards, peak harvest.

The county farmers market has a Halloween Saturday and then just two more regular Saturdays this year. Over in Medford, Johnson's Corner is down to its last hayrides of the fall.

A close-up of Brussels sprouts still on their stalks at a market table, with shoppers and white tents blurred behind.

Photo: Burlington County Agricultural Center

Moorestown · Sat Oct 31 · 8:30am-1pm · free admission

The Burlington County Farmers Market at the Ag Center

The Burlington County Farmers Market sets up every Saturday at the Burlington County Agricultural Center, 500 Centerton Road in Moorestown, rain or shine, and the county says the regular season runs through Nov 14. Expect a couple dozen farms plus food and craft vendors, and the Ag Center's site posts each week's vendor list. Go early, grab the Brussels sprouts still on the stalk, and carry them through the parking lot like a club. Ag Center · Burlington County

A farmer seen from behind drives a vintage tractor along a farm lane, with fields and trees behind.

Photo: Johnson's Corner Farm

Medford · through this weekend · check the ticket page for the last day

The last Fall Harvest hayrides at Johnson's Corner Farm

Johnson's Corner Farm in Medford is wrapping up its Fall Harvest season with hayrides and a corn maze. The ticket page runs through Sunday, Nov 1, but another listing says Saturday is the last day, so check before you load up the car. Prices vary by day and whether you add the maze, and the ticket page has them. Do the corn maze before the clocks fall back, because nobody wants to find the exit in the dark at dinnertime. Tickets · Johnson's Corner Farm

See you in the Pines.

Burlington County Buzz · written from around here · Tuesday mornings

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