An even later start and whipping 50-mile per hour winds did not deter us from seeking out some notable New Jersey sites on another particular weekend.

First stop, an unassuming little corner of West Windsor Township called Grovers Mill.  It is not uncommon to witness mass hysteria on the particular stretch of Cranbury Neck Road that arcs in front of Van Nest Park—just take a look at the chaos of traffic in and around the area every rush hour afternoon. But in 1938, the populace of the area reached singular heights of hysteria when a radio broadcast announced rather convincingly that the village was being overrun by hostile Martian invaders.  We know today that it was just an actor, Orson Welles, reading from a science fiction novel by, well, H.G. Wells.  At the time, however, townsfolk interpreted as real the reports of pulsating aliens, heat rays, civilian casualties, martial law declarations and so forth, and reacted with appropriate levels of distress.  It made the front page of the New York Times, catapulted Orson Welles to fame and put Grovers Mills on the map of the country’s collective consciousness.  Listen to the original broadcast.

We’re ashamed to admit that some of us have been passing Van Nest park by car for upwards of two decades without realizing its significance.  It was a vindication of sorts, therefore, to make a pointed pilgrimage to see the War of the Worlds monument (designed by NJ resident Thomas Jay Warren), which the township erected in 1988 as an homage to the public safety debacle. Situated about 20 steps past the kiddie playground and picnic tables, the bronze memorial immortalizes the event, depicting in sculpted relief Welles at the microphone, an average American family listening to the broadcast and most importantly, a tentacled, careening space ship dispensing death rays from overhead.  In a word:  cool!

Aside from a cute little waterfront and some barbecue pits there is not much else to see or do at Van Nest Park, but as New Jersey’s Roswell, it is a must to visit.  For our part, for some added entertainment before leaving, we put Ben on the playground’s spiral slide—he descended quickly down, inverted on his back with paws flailing in the air, and ker-thumped on the ground in shock a second later, unhurt but anxious to get back to his travel crate.