Looking Back: The History of Lake Hopatcong

The gentle ripples of Lake Hopatcong were swallowing the sunset as 115 history buffs gathered in the Jefferson House on Nolan’s Point to listen to local historian Marty Kane regale them with stories of earlier days on New Jersey’s largest lake.

Kane was a last minute replacement for Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen who had been scheduled to talk about his family’s history in government service, but had to cancel for family reasons.

Over the next several weeks, Jefferson Patch takes a look at the history of Lake Hopatcong. Today’s article discusses how the lake came to be in its current format. Next week, we’ll look at the development of resorts around the lake.

For starters, Kane noted it was New Jersey’s largest lake long before the dams that provided water for the Morris Canal.  Known as both Brooklyn Pond and Great Pond, the largest lake in New Jersey covered the area of the present Hopatcong State Park, Nolan’s Point and Byram Cove. A smaller pond covered the Woodport and Lake Forest area. Always a popular hunting and fishing spot, the lake area was home to a large settlement of Lenape Indians. Artifacts are still being found, Kane noted.

Iron brought the first white settlers and it was the iron forges that surrounded the lake that resulted in the need for the first dam, in the 1770s, which raised the level of the lake by six feet.

            “They needed a lot of water for the Morris Canal,” Kane said, explaining a second dam was constructed in 1820 as the canal was being built. The third and final dam came in 1840.

The canal itself was a quarter mile away, but a feeder canal ran along what is now Lakeside Boulevard and joined the main canal at Landing. A lock raised canal boats into the lake.

The canal transported iron ore. There was a rich vein in what is now the Weldon Road area of the township, but the ore was brought out of the hills by horse and wagon.

William Wood had a steamboat at Wood’s Port (later shortened to Woodport) that took the ore across the lake to the canal.

The Railroad Comes to the Lake

As railroads became more sophisticated and when the country needed more and more iron for the Civil War, the mine owners wanted a railroad to serve their mines. The first railroad was constructed from Ogdensburg down the Weldon Road area to Nolan’s Point, the deepest point in the lake. Huge steamboats carried the ore to the canal from 1866 to 1882 except for times when the canal was frozen.

But a railroad is expensive, so new cargo was sought. The railroad’s managers started offering one-day excursion trains to Nolan’s Point and soon pavilions were built to provide recreation for the visitors. The first of the pavilions, Lake Pavilion was on the site where the Windlass is now. The second was Allen’s Pavilion, built in 1910, where the Jefferson House is now. Lee’s Pavilion, no relation to Lee’s Park in Mt. Arlington, featured a photo studio, shops and three hotels built up the mountain. The one at the top of the hill eventually became the Suomi Hovi, the last hotel standing on the lake.

The wealthy visitors from New York considered Nolan’s Point a honky tonk, so they built an upscale resort in Mount Arlington, the Hotel Breslin, designed by renowned Philadelphia architect Frank Furness. The 250-room hotel was the largest on the lake. Its original boathouse still stands, but the wooden hotel burned during renovations in 1948.