The great garden state

I <3 NJ. I really do. I hear all the criticism. I’ve been utterly confused by Route 1 and have missed a few hundred exits on the turnpike. My nostrils feel the sulfur burn as I emerge from the Lincoln Tunnel and pass out of Jersey City — always the sign that I’m formally back in New Jersey.

So too have I seen some beautiful forests and farmland. I’ve canoed on pristine rivers and visited wonderfully quaint towns. Though many of our dirty, more industrial traits play a greater role in New Jersey’s public perception, the vast majority of the state really does live up to our nickname.

But it’s not for our gardens or wilderness that I love this great state. I love New Jersey for its eccentricity. The examples of New Jersey’s more questionable and decidedly bizarre state actions — seriously, who makes a law against pumping your own gas? — are rife, but two in particular impress and amuse me to no end.

First, the business of the New Jersey state song. There isn’t one. Not for lack of consideration or trying though. For decades — DECADES — New Jersey has been lobbied by songwriters and performers who would like to help rectify its abysmal status as the only state without a song. In 2009, four potential songs came before the state legislature. To date, still no song has been selected. One man, a fellow by the name of Red Mascara, wrote a song called “I’m From New Jersey” and has been lobbying the state legislature for more than 50 years, seeking state recognition for his song. You can find the song at njstatesong.com — a website worth the visit even if you don’t fancy a listen, because the rainbow, Curlz MT font and ’90s-era animation give it a rather interesting aesthetic.

Second, a Garden State claim to fame that relates to a much more dangerous park — a story that begins long before smoke stacks ever graced the New Jesey skies when velociraptors roamed the plains. The matter of our state dinosaur, the hadrosaurus. Yes, that’s correct, we have an officially recognized state dinosaur. Only six other states and the District of Columbia can boast a similar claim. In 1991, after a three-year process — let us recall how the state song has been under consideration and actively lobbied for decades — Chapter 161 of the Laws of New Jersey was passed and signed by then-governor Jim Florio.

The Hadrosaurus Bill, as it was known, was the result of an elementary school project. A local New Jersey teacher wanted to demonstrate to her class the democratic process of lawmaking and the function of government. She also wanted her class to learn about dinosaurs. Ms. Berry then did what all fourth grade teachers might — she killed two lesson plans with one project and led her class on a journey to give New Jersey a state dinosaur, something nine other states had at the time.

A bit of state history led to selecting the Hadrosaurus foulkii, its full name, as our Jurassic state symbol. (Factually the hadrosaurus was from the Cretaceous period, but everyone knows that scientific accuracy can be sacrificed for a pun.) In 1858, William Parker Foulke was completing an archeological dig in Camden County. There he discovered a nearly complete skeleton of “a 25-foot, eight-ton, duck-billed, herbivorous saurian (or reptile), which stood as high as ten feet at the hips,” as Section 1.B of Chapter 161of the law describes it. This was the first such discovery in the world, and it “was so unexpected and unusual that it startled the scientific thinking of the day and led to a revision of many conventional ideas as to the physical structure and life habits of prehistoric reptiles and provided a great stimulus to the study of dinosaurs which, until then, were relatively unknown outside the scientific community.”

Such a historically and scientifically important event clearly gave the hadrosaurus appropriate claim to the state title, and Ms. Berry’s classroom found two assemblymen, John A. Rocco and Thomas J. Shusted, to prepare and introduce the bill into the state legislature. From the beginning of the project in 1988 to its completion in 1991 — one 20th of the time the state legislature has spent considering and debating state songs – Strawbridge Elementary, in Haddon Township, had 97 students participate in the process.