Apple Pie Hill one of the highest elevations in the Pine Barrens totaling 209 feet above sea level. Nobody knows how the hill got its name accept that it resembled the shape of an apple pie. At the top of the hill is a fire tower where you can view the entire pine barrens from all directions. You can see distant towers in Atlantic City, Skyscrapers in Philadelphia and see the entire east/west end of NJ.  To the north one can see the hills where the terrain is mountainous. There is only two hills in the Pine Barrens of this magnitude one being "Tea Time Hill" and the other "Apple Pie Hill".

The name was first recorded on an 1849 map however since 1759 explorer's and locals called it Apple Pie Hill. Its hard to believe a name would stick for this long of a period.  In 1912 there was a cupola look out atop of the hill and in 1950 the present 60' Aermotor fire tower with a 7'x7' cab was moved from Big Hill where it first stood in 1938. The tower is painted red and white its not very stable but is ran by the NJ Forest Fire Service. 

The biggest debate about Apple Pie Hill is whether a sanitarium was built on the side of the hill and surrounding it. Below on this page you will find an excerpt from a book that says it never existed. While other researchers claim it did.  We do know for a fact Dr. White did have some structures surrounding the hill but the project for a Sanitarium does not seem to have taken place.  Old property maps show that Dr. White owned alot of land in the area. 

The pump house still is on the side of the hill along with a circular cement foundation that had a large sign at one time inside of it. There is a USGS report from 1935 that talks about. During that time the trees were only a foot or two tall so building on the hill would not have been impossible. The report mentions the Sanitarium which had been long closed down called Pine Crest.  What I think in theory is that the Sanitarium was starting to be built and never finished. This could explain why there isnt much evidence of it remaining. I have heard that people have found needles buried in the soft sand at the base of the hill signs that some medical facility could have existed here at one time. 

In the 1940s there were plans for a housing development to be built called Chatsworth Woods. Stone pillars were places here but nothing ever was built here. The land was vacant and all you had was the pillars and a sign. That same road leads you into Apple Pie Hill.  But others could easily pass it if you are not paying attention. 

The last building to stand in the area was burned down in 1980s it even singed the pine trees surrounding it. It was burned down I believe from squatters hanging out here. Its obvious that Apple Pie Hill is a local party hang out people climb the fire tower drink, smoke, throw things off of it etc. The foundation you see below is all that remains of one of the only homes near the hill its very old but was not used by Dr White but rather another resident many years ago. 

In a magazine there is an article about lost treasure on Apple Pie Hill which states the British ambushed some American Troops carrying an army payroll.  The British attacked them and buried the gold only to be hunted down by more American troops looking for them. When they were killed the location was never revealed. Rumor has it that at the top of the hill is a granite stone that was placed here before 1929. It had a triangle cut in it with the letters US chiseled on four sides. In 194 it was found to only have a hole in the center could this have had something to do with the treasure?

Then others debate and say there was no signs of treasure here as it would have been unearthed with the building of the sanitarium, eroded and revealed from the soft soil,  or even dug up by one of the locals. Its the mystery of it all that draws in curious seekers with their metal detectors.

One of the weirdest cases that took place outside of Apple Pie Hill is a man found dead on the side of the road named Charles Wills. He was said to be a victim of the Jersey Devil. His name is mentioned in my Friendship prologue. Notice how everything is so connected that is because in the Pine Barrens it is a small world. The locals easily were able to get wind of things because all the towns operated on the notion of providing for eachother. 

© By

Lord Rick

Henry Beck, in More Forgotten Towns, speaks of


"the late Dr.
William A. White, a New York physician, (who) always
contemplated building a sanitarium on the rise of the hill. It is
his modern white-painted dwelling in the midst of a cluster of small
buildings on the promontory. Down the slope is a small bottling
house where Dr. White obtained and circulated a health water under a
State license, water Mr. LeDuc said was so pure that it
is used in storage batteries of this      

vicinity--he gave us
two dusty bottles of it but thus far we have lacked the courage to try
it out. The water came from a well seventy feet deep.

The fate of the hospital, called Pine Crest on the labels of the
health water bottles, has been uncertain since Dr. White's death. A
key to the place was on Warden LeDuc's large jingling chain but he used
it only for those interested in another broken dream of the
pine country" (p 141).

According to Ted Gordon, who has aquired numerous documents regarding
Dr. White and his proposed sanitarium, the sanitarium itself was never
built. The sanitorium was to be built at Pine Crest. There was a well
on the top of the Hill which is now filled in--with a VW, no less--that
once supplied Dr. White's water. From that well comes a pipe that, if
followed, will lead one to some of the bungalows that Dr. White built.
Those homes run between the Central Railroad of New Jersey and Apple
Pie Hill. The Harris Station, which is no longer in existance, was
renamed Pine Crest in 1923 after the Pine Crest Estates that Dr. White
attempted to establish.  The large stone foundation that remain at
the bottom of Apple Pie Hill is not one of Dr. White's buildings, says
Ted. Mr. Gordon recalls many years ago a gentleman from Camden County
building a beautiful stone house there, by means of squatting. Locals
did not take kindly to the squatting and his house was burned down
(Gordon).


This author attended a geology of the Pines trip that was offered by
the Nature Conservancy, led by geologist Karenne Snow. One of our stops
included Apple Pie Hill, where we learned that Apple Pie Hill (and Tea
Time Hill) are remnants of "an ancient pre-Pleistocene erosional
surface comprised of the Pliocene Beacon Hill Gravel. These are low
hills on the coastal plain that are also capped with the Beacon Hill
Gravel. It is unclear whether all of these deposits are the same age,
or whether they were deposited by streams or by marine currents similar
to modern gravel accumulations on the continental shelf. These gravel
deposits have endured possibly millions of years of exposure to
rainwater and organic acids from decaying plant material. All that
remains on the hilltop is an assortment of heavily etched quartz
pebbles."(USGS)