Another Autumn Without A Cranberry Harvest At Double Trouble State Park

Once again, there be no ”Red October” at Double Trouble State Park this year.

The historic cranberry bogs have lain fallow since 2012, when Deptford-based Honest Berries conducted a limited harvest before Superstorm Sandy roared in on Oct. 29, 2012.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed,” said Bob Considine, chief spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Protection. “We know the cranberry harvest at Double Trouble has been a popular attraction in autumn’s past and we’re now going a couple of seasons straight without a harvest. So we’ll be looking at how to proceed with unfarmed bogs on state lands in the very near future.”

The DEP had hoped that another leaseholder would step up for a special agricultural use permit to harvest the 100-year-old bogs for the 2015 season, but none did.

The last full harvest at Double Trouble was back in 2010. That means the bogs have gone pretty much unmaintained since then. Each year, more weeds take over and more cranberry plants disappear.

The Leni-Lenape Indians were the first to harvest cranberries in the park. But the Double Trouble cranberry industry began to flourish at the beginning of the 20th century.

Edward Crabbe of Toms River bought the Double Trouble tract in 1904 and formed the Double Trouble Company. His primary goal was to cut lumber for his sawmill company.

But he pulled out the tree stumps in some areas and used the acreage as cranberry bogs, according to “When Cranberries Were King,” a book published by the Ocean County Historical Society.

The Double Trouble Company soon became one of the largest cranberry operations in the state.

“Double Trouble Village was typical of company towns built in the Pine Barrens,” according to the DEP’s website. “These isolated communities were entirely self-sufficient and totally dependent on the success of the particular industry.”

The Crabbe family sold the Double Trouble tract to the state’s Green Acres program in 1964, but leased back 125 acres and the outbuildings to continue the cranberry business.

Since then, the bogs had been harvested by various second-generation cranberry farmers. But the last longtime leaseholders decided to retire in 2010, according to the DEP.

The cranberry bogs and a number of outbuildings at the park make up about 200 acres of the roughly 8,400-acre park. They are part of the Double Trouble Historic District, which was placed on the State Register of Historic Places in 1977 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Most of the century-old outbuildings are slowly deteriorating as well.

Patch file photo by Patricia A. Miller