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Jetport plan 50 years ago led to founding of New Jersey Conservation Foundation

Not every organization can trace its beginnings to an exact moment in history, but for New Jersey Conservation Foundation, it started with a banner headline that shook a community to its core.

“Plans Jetport in Morris County” screamed the front page of the Newark Evening News on Dec. 3, 1959. The article revealed that the Port of New York Authority (now known as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) had been secretly developing plans to build a major airport in the Great Swamp, an unspoiled expanse of marshland and forest less than 30 miles west of Manhattan.

“Shock, disbelief and anger swept over residents in the Great Swamp area,” wrote Cam Cavanaugh in Saving the Great Swamp, a 1978 book about the jetport proposal and ensuing fight against it. “The new jetport would cover 10,000 acres – twice the size of Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy) International Airport – and would cost $220 million. It would mean not only the loss of homes, churches, schools and local businesses, but the destruction of a peaceful way of life.”

Residents in the affected towns and villages sprang furiously into action.

Two-pronged fight

By early 1960, citizens groups had begun organizing against Port Authority power brokers who wanted to tear up the Great Swamp and pave it over. The battle to save the Swamp became a two-pronged fight.

An anti-airport group called the Jersey Jetport Site Association worked to block the Port Authority from extending its reach into Morris County. The group took its fight through the New Jersey Legislature and into the halls of Congress.

Meanwhile, a group of conservationists came up with an ingenious tactic for protecting the Great Swamp: convincing the U.S. Department of the Interior to make the land part of the National Wildlife Refuge system. They were told that a new refuge would have to be at least 3,000 acres - a daunting number, but not impossible.

'A Staggering Coup'

With the financial backing of Marcellus Hartley Dodge of Madison, retired chairman of the Remington Arms Company, the conservationists began quietly acquiring land. In September 1960, fifteen families signed over nearly 1,000 acres in the middle of the Great Swamp to the prestigious North American Wildlife Foundation of Washington, D.C., of which Dodge was a former board member. In turn, the Foundation deeded the land to the Department of the Interior to become the nucleus of the new refuge.

“Snatching 1,000 acres from under the Port Authority’s nose was a staggering coup for the conservationists, and it broke the logjam for the refuge plan,” wrote Cavanaugh in Saving the Great Swamp. But the fight was not yet won; at least 2,000 more acres were needed.

An affiliation between local organizers and the North American Wildlife Foundation seemed to offer the best hope for acquiring the additional land. On March 21, 1961, the Great Swamp Committee of the North American Wildlife Foundation officially came into being. Its secretary was Helen Fenske, a Harding Township housewife-turned-conservationist who had emerged as a leader in the fight to save the swamp. She set up an office in her kitchen, which became a beehive of lobbying and fund-raising activity.

Successful trip

In June 1961, Fenske and a few other supporters got a chance to promote their cause directly to the northeastern regional office of the Fish and Wildlife Service in Boston. Armed with slides, brochures and financial records, they favorably impressed the regional director, John Gottschalk, who pledged his “full support” of the Great Swamp Committee and its objectives.

Nearly four and a half years after the fateful headlines of December 1959, the Great Swamp Committee achieved its goal of buying 3,000 acres to turn over to the federal government. The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge was officially dedicated on May 29, 1964, with Interior Secretary Stewart Udall in attendance.

That year, the Great Swamp Committee became the Great Swamp Conservation Foundation, which, within a few months, changed its name to North Jersey Conservation Foundation to indicate a broadened scope of activities. Fenske was still at the helm, by then holding the title of director.

Blessing in disguise

In an October 1968 interview with the Morris County Daily Record, just after President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill designating the Great Swamp a wilderness area, Fenske reflected on how the threat of a jetport had galvanized the community to unite behind the preservation of the Great Swamp. “The jetport was a tremendous asset to us,” she said, predicting that future land preservations might not be so easy without an immediate threat.

But that didn’t stop the conservation foundation, which by then was involved in a number of other land projects – including assisting in the preservation of thousands of acres in the Pine Barrens in the southern part of the state.

In 1969, Fenske left to accept another job and was replaced by David Moore. In 1975, under Moore’s direction, the organization changed its name to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation to reflect the expanded statewide scope of its work. Moore served as executive director until his retirement in 1999, at which time he turned the reins over to longtime assistant director Michele S. Byers. Byers is still executive director today.