The Third Annual West Windsor BikeFest, scheduled for Saturday, May 27, will offer cyclists a chance to participate in a event that will bring riders close to a geological phenomenon which goes undetected by most residents.
The 10-mile Town Historical Tour, which is the third longest and most popular of the four rides that comprise the annual event, takes participants past 22 points of interest, including homes thought to have been stops on the Underground Railroad, which helped lead southern slaves to northern freedom in the 1800s. The tour also passes the oldest building still standing in West Windsor.
But this year, in a bit of whimsy, the tour includes a site that has no historic buildings and no man-made history. It’s a spot along the Great West Windsor Divide, roughly parallel about 100 yards south of Village Road.
The seemingly level spot is so dubbed because all of the water that flows from this line drains into one of two watersheds. Everything north of the divide ends up in the Raritan River Basin via the Millstone River, and to the south, all drainage flows toward the Delaware River and its basin.
The West Windsor Divide spans the width of the township, beginning on the eastern border and running parallel with Village Road, before creeping northward, exiting the township on its western side near where Clarksville intersects Quakerbridge Road.
While the word “divide” conjures up images of the Continental, or the Great Divide, which occurs in the Rocky Mountains, bicyclists rolling past the West Windsor divide may find it somewhat less dramatic. “Our terrain is much more subtle,” says geologist D.J. Varner of Amherst Way in Princeton Junction, a 22-year resident of West Windsor.
“What you should be able to see is that the divide is occupying the highest altitude. The ground should slope away from the divide, so water flows downhill away from it in either direction,” says Varner. But, in fact, it is virtually invisible to the naked eye. Varner himself learned of this particular divide from state maps and now has put together his own map to help illustrate to the riders what and where this divide is.
A graduate of Kent State University, Varner’s first job was as an entry level geologist at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. He now runs a consulting firm, Advanced Environmental Solutions, which specializes in the study of groundwater, tracking the sources of its contamination.
Varner, who has two daughters in WW-P High School South, is himself an avid cyclist, with more than a casual interest in the terrain he covers. He developed his interest in earth science while growing up in Hazelton, a Pennsylvania coal mining center where, he says, “a century of mining exposed many interesting plant fossils but also severely degraded the environment. I developed the desire to apply earth sciences to help repair some of mankind’s damage.”
Whirr of the Wheels Bike Fest, West Windsor Community Park, Route 571, 609-799-6141. Saturday, May 27, 7:30 a.m. Rain date May 28. Registration for the historical tour begins at 9:30 a.m. and the tour sets out at 10 a.m.
The bike fest also includes a Bike Safety Rodeo, a one-mile “family fun” ride, a 20-mile ride, and a 40-mile ride for experienced adult riders only, with registration at 7:30 a.m. www.wwparks-recreation.com.
