The Lost Lake Beneath the Hills: The Forgotten Silk City of Pluckemin

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The “Lyons (France) of New Jersey”

Then came industry. In July 1910 the Bernardsville News ran a whimsical headline:

“The Lyons of New Jersey.”

The article announced the arrival of “Big Bob” McCullough of Paterson, a larger-than-life entrepreneur who founded the Superior Thread and Yarn Company right here in Pluckemin. Using water from Echo Lake, McCullough built a factory to spin a new kind of “near-silk” yarn, boasting that it would “put Lyons, France, and Paterson on the blink.”

The new mill would make Pluckemin “the greatest ever, Ha boy! Bound to do it!”
And for a brief moment in 1910, it really was.
Bedminster (Pluckemin) Mayor “Tune” Melick

The two-story mill, captured in an old photograph labeled “Woolen Mills Pluckamin,” stood at the base of Schley (Pigtail) Mountain with its smokestack puffing proudly. The plant promised to employ fifty men and women from local farms, Pluckemin’s own miniature Industrial Revolution.

Somerset Woolen Mills, the site before Superior Thread and Yarn Company was built in 1898 on the south side of Chambers Brook near Pluckemin, and was demolished in 1937.

Threads, Bleach, and Change

For a decade, the Superior Thread and Yarn Company thrived. By 1916, a notice announced that the “former Superior Thread and Yarn Co., including Echo Lake, 36 acres of land, and dwelling houses” had been sold to a New York bleachery company. The mill pond and the dam remained, feeding the new operation until progress and paving overtook them.

If you have ever cruised along Route 202 and 206 just north of I-78, you have unknowingly passed the ghost of what locals once called “The Lyons France of New Jersey.” Today, the land is part of The Hills Village North development, but in the early 1900s, it shimmered with promise, home to a manmade lake, a roaring water-powered mill, and dreams of turning sleepy Pluckemin into the next Paterson.

Echo Lake: The Mill Pond That Time Forgot

At the turn of the century, a timber crib dam was built in a ravine east of Washington Valley Road. Locals called the small impoundment Echo Lake. Early postcards show moonlit reflections and a rustic gazebo perched above the dam. Behind that serene surface, however, the lake fed the machinery of progress. It provided the headwater that powered a new textile mill on the valley floor.

The nearby Kenilworth Inn, a grand shingle-style lodge that stood where the 202 and 206 intersection lies today, hosted vacationers and Sunday school retreats. One 1919 report from a Somerset County conference described “a doggie roast at the falls above Echo Lake” and evening vespers held “on the bank of Echo Lake.” The lake was both playground and powerhouse.

The Kenilworth Inn ultimately burned in 1928 and was later replaced with an A&P. Today, it is the location of a Fresh Market.

As automobiles replaced wagons and Route 29 became U.S. 202, the once bustling mill faded from maps. The Kenilworth Inn burned in 1928, Echo Lake was drained, and the ravine gradually filled with earth. By the late 1970s, the land was regraded for the modern Hills Development, erasing the last ripples of the lake.

Rediscovering Echo Lake

Today, standing near Hills Drive or Artillery Park Road, you are treading over history, where water once cascaded over the “falls above Echo Lake,” powering looms and lighting hopes for a silk empire that never quite came true. The wooded slope behind the intersection still hints at the old ravine; listen closely and you can almost hear the echo of that vanished waterfall.

Upstream from the *Superior Thread and Yarn Co*mpany factory and mill, c1910.

Downstream from Pluckemin, Echo Lake, and the *Superior Thread and Yarn Co*mpany factory and mill, c1910.

Why It Matters

This forgotten chapter weaves together everything that defines the Somerset Hills story: ambition, innovation, faith, and reinvention. From a tranquil lake hosting hymn-singing campers to a humming mill daring to rival France, Echo Lake symbolizes a moment when Pluckemin imagined itself as the future. Today, it reminds us that even beneath our suburban streets lie the foundations and the dreams of the people who came before.