From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "The Hindenburg disaster doomed future transatlantic flights of other big rigid airships. It also spelled the end of man's long dream of flying without wings. Hangar One was designated an historial site in 1975, when it was listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places. At the 50th anniversary of the Hinenburg disaster, on May 6, 1987, a ceremony dedcated the site of the fatal crash, which is considered one of America's greatest disasters."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "The Hindenburg made six crossings between Germany and America, proving its apparent safety. But the year after its first landing in Lakehurst, its luck ran out on May 6, 1937. As the dirigible returned to Lakehurst on its sixth transatlantic flight, with 36 passengers and 61 crewmen aboard, the great luxury ship met its fate ... Shortly after 7 p.m., when the wind diminished, the Hindenburg swung toward Lakehurst to tie up at the mooring mast. On its final approach, only 200 feet from the landing field in front of the …

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "The Hindenburg was a blend of safety and luxury. Fine porcelain china with the Hindenburg medallion graced the dining tables upon which everything from turkey to lobser was served, along with fine wines and German beer."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "Although this stellar ship was designed to fly with helium, it was not available in Germany. At the time of the Hindenburg's landing in Lakehurst, Germany was in the grips of the Nazi Pary and Third Reich dictator Adolph Hitler. As a result, the United States government refused to sell helium to Germany for fear that the Nazi's would divert the gas to war use. Lacking the safer gas, the Germans were forced to use the highly flammable hydrogen gas instead."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "The large German built dirigible, the Hindenburg, completed many round trips between Frankfurt and Brazil before making her first flight to America. Over 100,000 people flocked to Lakehurst to witness the great luxury German floating passenger airships's first landing at Lakehurst on May 6, 1936."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "The ZR-1, the first American-made rigid airship, was built in Philadelphia and assembled in Hangar One [at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station] under the guidance of two German dirigible engineers ... [The ship] flew up Pennsylvania Avenue [in Washington D.C.] to the White House, where President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge interrupted their lunch to run to the south portico to witness the spactacle."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "The Navy bought the Army Training School, Camp Kendrick, in 1919. Experts were sent to study air currents, weather and other environmental conditions for the proposed establishment of a lighter-than-air base ... Upon completion, the world's largest hangar and the first built in America stood 224 feet hght, 966 fee long and 350 feet wide. The Lakehurst Naval Air Station was commissioned in June 1921."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "In the mid 1800s, several small hamlets struggled to spring up around [a] natural clay deposit [near Whiting] .... [Capt. Daniel] Townsend called the works [eventually bult there] the Townsend Clay Manufacturing Company. In 1873, Daniel and his wife sold the entire works to the Wheatland Manufacturing and Improvement Co. for $500,000. The company went bankrupt. causing the Ocean County sheriff ... to see the lands."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "The Beckersville School, known initially as the Horicon School when it opened in 1872, was he first one-room school in the county to close [in 1900] after it consolidated with the Lakehurst School."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "Encompassing 600 acres, Keswick has always been supported by voluntary gifts, which are used to maintain the church, dormitory, hall and farm buildings. Rustic arched bridges over the stream and a gazebo have been added, offering pleasant and peaceful vistas of the lake [that was] dammed to create power for [a nearby] sawmill."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "After [William Raws's] first wife and mother had died in England, he remarried and had his children brought to America with his new wife, Dora. They began a rehabilitation program for the drunks they found on the streets of Philadelphia. With the purchase of the old Giberson Mill, which they called the Keswick Colony of Mercy, the Raws restored the old sawmill buildings to provide a haven for others who had ruined their lives with excessive drinking."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: "In 1988, the Lancewood Land and Improvement Co. bought the land between the Junction and Lacey Road where a hotel called Pine Forest House was built. It attracted guests in the summer as a health spa or resort with bowling alleys and billiard rooms. In the fall it also accommodated hunters."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: In Whiting, "Presbyterians bought a 1,000-square-foot tract of land from Benjamin F. Errington and his wife, Mary, E., on Aug. 20, 1875. Errington and Thomas Rae, who had filed a development tract for this parcel, deeded it for a church on Franklin Avenue (now known as Route 530). The church was built on bricks that came from the nearby Torrey Brick Yard. A little more than a quarter century later, in 1903, it became St. John's Methodist Episcopal Church of Whiting."

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: Lakehurst was a "pretty little town" at the turn of the century. The elm trees that Manchester's founders had planted decades earlier bordered both sides of the main street.

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: In 1871, Whiting sold some lands to the New Jersey Southern Railroad Co. ...Known as Whiting Junction, this land became the railroad hub for the central section of New Jersey.

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: The original post office in Whiting, around 1861.

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: The old boundaries of the village of Manchester became the new boundaries of Lakehurst when the borough was incorporated on April 7, 1921. The first mayor of Lakehurst was Charles L. Rogers, who worked in railroad shops and then engaged in the mercantile and lumber business.

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: The depot for the Lakehurst stop on the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: In 1870, Manchester's leaders gave away land on Center Street for the construction of St. John's Roman Catholic Church, where the first Mass was celebrated on May 3, 1874.

From Ocean County, Four Centuries in the Making, by Pauline S. Miller: Local John Wesley was an engineer on the New Jerset Southern Railroad. He operated a locomotive until he retired, and after serving as an engineer of the Blue Comet. The train engine, which ran through the area, was one of the fastest on any railroad.