Green Brook Bi-lingual Booklet
Somerset and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey
Since 1988 Hunter Research has provided a wide range of cultural resource services in connection with the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District’s Green Brook Flood Damage Reduction Project, a major public works undertaking that is currently nearing completion. The Bound Brook/Green Brook area has endured 16 serious floods since 1810. In response, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has constructed an elaborate and sophisticated system of flood walls, levees, channel diversions, widening projects and retention basins throughout the Green Brook basin. Our firm has performed Phase I, II and III level studies in a variety of settings where historic architectural and archaeological resources have required identification, evaluation and mitigation. Many of the Phase III tasks have been conducted in fulfillment of a Memorandum of Agreement with the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office.
As one of several public outreach measures designed to mitigate the project’s effects on archaeological and historical resources Hunter Research researched, wrote and designed a 30-page booklet about the Green Brook drainage basin. Titled Where the Green Brook Meets the Raritan, the booklet focuses in particular on Bound Brook, a settlement that played important roles in the American Revolution, the transportation revolution of the 19th century, and the modernization and rebirth of this area in the 20th and 21st centuries. The booklet uses water as a theme to tie together the community’s diverse history: on the one hand, water is explored as a sustaining force – a source of food, a means of transportation, and a generator of power for industry; on the other, a more threatening prospect – water is seen as an obstacle in the landscape and a source of inundation in times of heavy weather. The booklet was produced in both English and Spanish language versions to serve the modern demographic of the Bound Brook community.
