Camden County Buzz

A weekly look around Camden County.

Issue 1 - A loop around the Cooper River and the dinosaur on Maple Avenue

Hey, neighbor. Welcome to the first Camden County Buzz. Every Tuesday I'll send you one email about life around here, from the Camden waterfront out through Collingswood, Haddonfield and Cherry Hill, and down the White Horse Pike to Berlin and Winslow. This first one runs from Halloween weekend through Sunday, Nov 8, so grab a Wawa coffee and save it.

What's in this one

1

Hot picks · Haddonfield's kids take over Kings Highway for the Halloween parade, the aquarium's glowing pumpkins have one weekend left, and Challenge Grove throws a Día de los Muertos party.

2

Field guide · How to walk the Cooper River Park loop while the leaves are still on the trees.

3

The scrap · A map that proves New Jersey is the only place that named October 30, and an NJ Transit bus that finally beat traffic.

4

What's building · A plain-English look at the county's open space question on your Nov 3 ballot, and one Cherry Hill corner where a farm is coming back and a car wash wants in.

5

Makers · Make a clay pumpkin platter in Haddonfield, then catch a curator's tour at Rutgers-Camden's Stedman Gallery.

6

Deep cut · Hadrosaurus Park, the Haddonfield ravine where the first mounted dinosaur came out of the ground.

7

Season · The Collingswood Farmers Market's last Saturdays under the PATCO tracks.

Hot picks

This weekend's best bets around here.

Halloween lands on a Saturday, so Haddonfield gets its parade Friday night and the rest of us get a whole weekend to use the costume twice. Next Saturday, Challenge Grove has a Día de los Muertos celebration.

Costumed kids, including a ghost, a witch and a dinosaur, walk a leashed dog down a tree-lined main street of brick sidewalks and storefronts in daylight, with a line of uniformed marchers ahead. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Haddonfield · Fri Oct 30 · lineup 6pm, steps off 6:30pm

The Haddonfield Halloween Parade on Kings Highway

The Haddonfield Celebrations Association's Halloween parade takes over Kings Highway Friday night, with hundreds of kids in costume marching behind the Haddonfield Memorial High School Marching Band. Lineup is at 6 at Chestnut Street and Kings Highway, it steps off at 6:30, and it ends behind Borough Hall. The Courier-Post says a drone show follows at 7:30, and that Kings Highway closes from Chestnut Street to the PATCO bridge. The association promises "even a few costumed canines," so the dog is coming whether it likes it or not. Haddonfield Celebrations Association

A shark and a ray swim in an aquarium tank, with carved jack-o'-lanterns and a fish-shaped pumpkin lined up on the floor in front of it. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Camden waterfront · through Sun Nov 1 · with aquarium admission

Fintastic Pumpkin Glow's last weekend at Adventure Aquarium

Adventure Aquarium at 1 Riverside Drive has glowing pumpkins all over the building, some floating on the surface and some sunk down in the tanks with the sharks and rays, and Sunday is the last day. It's included with regular admission, so if the kids are already sugar-crashed from Saturday, this is a dark, cool, calm way to spend Sunday. I just want to see a shark swim past a jack-o'-lantern. Adventure Aquarium

An ofrenda under a wooden park pavilion, with papel picado strung overhead, blank photo frames, flowers, candles, sugar skulls and a guitar. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Cherry Hill · Sat Nov 7 · noon-7pm

Día de los Muertos at Challenge Grove

Camden County throws a Día de los Muertos celebration at John H. Adler Memorial Park at Challenge Grove, 101 Bortons Mill Road, from noon to 7. The county lists traditional music and dance, ofrendas, crafts and face painting for kids, and Mexican food. Come hungry. Camden County

Field guide

One useful guide to living around here.

A paved path and a low fieldstone wall with steps run along a calm lake, an eight-oared rowing shell glides past, and a tall building with a tower stands on the far bank. Hatch illustration.

Cooper River Park (North and South Park Drives between Route 130 and Cuthbert Blvd, with the extension to Grove St) · Cherry Hill, Pennsauken, Collingswood and Haddon Township

The Cooper River Park loop - a fall walk around the lake from Cherry Hill to Collingswood

When somebody new to the county asks me where to walk, I send them to Cooper River Park. The main loop is about 3.8 paved, flat miles around the lake from Cuthbert Boulevard to Route 130, and it doesn't cross a single street, so the little ones can ride the whole way.

The lake is man-made. The county built Cooper River Park between 1925 and 1940, damming the river into a lake about two and a half miles long, and Depression-era crews laid a lot of the stone walls you'll walk past. Go in the morning and you'll catch crew shells coming down the 2,000-meter rowing course by the Boathouse.

The full guide has parking and PATCO tips, the 1730s house on South Park Drive, and where to stand to watch the rowers.

Read the field guide

The scrap

The best stuff you missed in the area's social media world.

The rest of the country has no word for the night before Halloween. We do. Plus an NJ Transit bus that finally found a way around traffic.

New Jersey · X

"What do you call the night before Halloween?"

The whole country looked at October 30 and shrugged, and New Jersey went ahead and named it. X

via @VintageNJ1

An edited photo of a white NJ Transit bus airborne with smoke trailing, jumping over a white truck and a row of cars

New Jersey · Reddit

"NJ Transit announces new express service"

Somebody photoshopped an NJ Transit bus jumping a row of cars, and honestly it's the fastest one I've seen. Reddit

via u/th3nsim0nsaid

What's building

What's going up, getting paused, or getting fought over.

Every Camden County voter gets the same county question on Nov 3, so here's what it actually asks. And there's a corner in Cherry Hill where a farm is coming back and a car wash wants in across the street.

A heron stands in a pond below a small waterfall, with cattails at the edge and a folded paper with a blank checkbox resting on a fieldstone wall. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Countywide · Tue Nov 3 · on your Nov 3 ballot

The county open space question on your Nov 3 ballot

Camden County's ballot question asks whether to raise the county Open Space Trust Fund tax from 2 cents to 3 cents per $100 of property value, which works out to $30 a year instead of $20 for every $100,000. The ballot's explanatory statement says the money would go to cleaning up rivers, lakes and streams including the Cooper River, protecting drinking water sources and natural areas, restoring flood-control wetlands, and parks, and it puts the cost at $1.83 a month for the average homeowner. The Inquirer and The Retrospect both report the extra penny would fund a roughly $400 million clean water plan over about 10 years. A yes raises the rate. A no keeps it at 2 cents. Read the full question before you go, and remember it's on your ballot whether you live in Camden or Winslow. Camden County sample ballots · Sample ballot (Haddonfield) · Ballotpedia

A small tractor works a freshly tilled field at a suburban intersection with a traffic light, and an empty canopy stands across the road. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Cherry Hill / Voorhees line (Evesham, Springdale and White Horse Roads) · zoning hearing scheduled Thu Nov 12

A farm comes back to Holly Ravine, and a car wash wants the corner across the street

Cherry Hill council voted Oct 13 to lease about nine and a half acres of the township-owned Holly Ravine property to Springdale Farm for five years, so the old Gilmour dairy at Evesham and Springdale Roads goes back to growing food. The Inquirer says Springdale pays $1,000 a year and will plant a cover crop first, and the township says the woods and ravine stay open to the public with new parking. Right across the intersection on the Voorhees side, a developer wants to knock down the old Shell station and a house and build a three-lane car wash. That lot is zoned residential, so it needs a use variance, and the Voorhees zoning board has it scheduled for Nov 12. The one corner gets a tractor and maybe a car wash, which is about as Camden County as it gets. Inquirer: Holly Ravine · Inquirer: car wash

Makers

Local makers nights and market tables worth hitting.

Halloween weekend ends with clay at the Markeim in Haddonfield, and on Thursday a curator walks you through the fall show at Rutgers-Camden's gallery.

Hands shape a clay pumpkin platter on a studio table, with clay tools and a sponge nearby and finished platters on the shelves. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Haddonfield · Sun Nov 1 · 11am-1pm · $50-$65

Pumpkin Platters with Patti at the Markeim Arts Center

Patti Dirscherl runs a clay workshop in the Markeim Arts Center's studio at 104 Walnut Street, where you make your own textured pumpkin serving platter. The Markeim lists it at $50 to $65, and open studio students get a discount. Firing takes three to four weeks, so it comes back just in time to hold Thanksgiving pie and get compliments you didn't earn yet. Markeim Arts Center

Five visitors, seen from behind, stand in a white-walled gallery looking at framed works under a hanging mobile. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Camden (Rutgers-Camden) · Thu Nov 5 · 12:45-1:45pm

A curator's tour of "Light of the Guiding Star" at the Stedman Gallery

Curator Stass Shpanin walks through "Light of the Guiding Star" at Rutgers-Camden's Stedman Gallery, in the Fine Arts Building at 314 Linden Street. The gallery describes the show as being about the magical and supernatural in the search for a new home, and it's up through Dec. 12. It's a lunch-hour tour, so this is the most interesting thing you can do on your break all week. Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts

Deep cut

One local history leftover worth knowing.

A dug-out clay pit in the woods with large dinosaur bones half exposed, a wooden cart holding a bone on straw, a shovel and a trowel, and a faint duck-billed dinosaur outline among the trees. Hatch illustration.

Hadrosaurus Park · east end of Maple Avenue, Haddonfield (and the Haddy bronze at Kings Highway and Lantern Lane)

Hadrosaurus Park - the Haddonfield ravine where the world's first mounted dinosaur came out of the ground

I'd walked past the bronze dinosaur on Kings Highway a hundred times before I asked why it's there. The answer is a wooded ravine at the end of Maple Avenue, where marl diggers on a Haddonfield farm hit giant bones and nobody knew what they were.

In 1858, a Philadelphia lawyer spending the summer in town dug the pit back out. Joseph Leidy at the Academy of Natural Sciences worked out that the animal walked on its hind legs, and in 1868 it went on display in Philly as the first mounted dinosaur skeleton anyone could see.

The full story has a myth check on the "first complete dinosaur" line, how a Westmont fourth-grade class made it the state dinosaur, and where to see Haddy now that the Academy's museum has closed.

Read the deep cut

Season

What's in the air right now. Farm stands, orchards, peak harvest.

The Collingswood Farmers Market has four Saturdays left before it packs up for the winter.

Market tents and crates of produce beside an elevated concrete rail line, with two round water towers rising behind. Hatch illustration.

Illustration by Buzz Artist

Collingswood · Saturdays through Nov 21 · 8am-noon

The Collingswood Farmers Market under the PATCO tracks

The Collingswood Farmers Market sets up every Saturday morning under the PATCO High Speedline, between Collings and Irvin Avenues, from 8 to noon, rain or shine. The 2026 season runs through Nov 21, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. The borough says there's free parking at the Collingswood PATCO station lot and the LumberYard garage. Look for the big blue water towers, grab a coffee, and get the Thanksgiving vegetables while they still have dirt on them. Collingswood Farmers Market

See you down the Pike.

Camden County Buzz · written from around here · Tuesday mornings

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