InfoAge Science & History Museums in Wall Township, New Jersey, is a cluster of nearly two dozen small museums packed into a former Marconi wireless station and Army research base — the same patch of ground where scientists bounced the first radar signal off the moon in 1946. It’s open just three days a week,…
The Matchbox Road Museum: Newfield’s Shrine to 50,000 Tiny Cars
The Matchbox Road Museum in Newfield, New Jersey is a one-man collection of more than 50,000 Matchbox cars, trucks, and related toys, packed wall-to-wall inside a converted three-car garage. It’s open by appointment only, run by its founder and his fellow collectors, and it might be the single densest concentration of tiny die-cast vehicles on…
Big SNOW American Dream: NJ’s Indoor Ski Slope With Real Snow
Big SNOW American Dream is North America’s only real-snow, year-round indoor ski and snowboard resort, built inside the American Dream megamall in East Rutherford, New Jersey. You can ski or ride on actual machine-made snow in a 28-degree room in the middle of July, ten minutes from Manhattan, without ever checking a weather forecast. If…
The Museum of American Glass: Millville’s Shrine to the World’s Biggest Bottle
The Museum of American Glass sits inside WheatonArts in Millville, New Jersey, and it holds the world’s record for the largest hand-blown glass bottle, along with more than 22,000 pieces of glass ranging from Civil War-era medicine bottles to a full-sized glass casket. It’s the kind of place you stumble into expecting a quiet afternoon…
Jungle Habitat: The Abandoned Warner Bros. Safari Hiding in a NJ Forest
Jungle Habitat was a Warner Bros.-owned drive-through safari park in West Milford, New Jersey, that operated from 1972 to 1976 and once drew hundreds of thousands of visitors to see lions, elephants, and more than a thousand other animals. It’s long gone as a zoo, but the 800-acre property is now public land threaded with…
The Golden Nugget Flea Market: Lambertville’s Gold Rush-Named Treasure Hunt
The Golden Nugget Flea Market is a 15-acre open-air and indoor antique market in Lambertville, New Jersey, open every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday since 1967. It’s named after James W. Marshall, a Lambertville native whose accidental gold discovery in California set off the 1849 Gold Rush. Today the market pulls in hundreds of dealers selling…
The Red Mill Museum Village: New Jersey’s Most Photographed Factory
The Red Mill Museum Village is a 10-acre open-air history museum in Clinton, New Jersey, built around a four-story mill from around 1810 that processed wool, grain, plaster, graphite, and talc before it ever became a tourist stop. It’s often called the most photographed building in the state, and once you see it sitting beside…
Silverball Retro Arcade: Asbury Park’s Living Pinball Museum
Silverball Retro Arcade is a pinball museum on the Asbury Park boardwalk where almost every machine, some dating back to 1950, is set to free play so you can actually touch the history instead of just looking at it. It’s the kind of place where a grandfather, a parent, and a kid can all play…
Space Farms Zoo and Museum: Sussex County’s Century-Old Wild Side
Space Farms Zoo and Museum is a 100-acre zoo and history museum in Beemerville, a corner of Wantage Township in Sussex County, New Jersey. It began in 1927 as a quarter-acre general store that happened to shelter a few trapped wild animals, and it has since grown into a sprawling complex with more than 500…
The Cape May WWII Lookout Tower: NJ’s Last Concrete Sentry
The Cape May WWII Lookout Tower is a 100-foot concrete watchtower built in 1942 to help defend the Delaware Bay from German attack, and today it’s the last freestanding World War II fire control tower still standing in New Jersey. You can climb its six floors, read the names of local veterans on its Wall…