It happened in New Jersey
Marc Mappen reveals glimpses of New Jersey's past
Archived article from Dec 4, 1998
Gangster convention Everybody goes to Atlantic City for a convention: beauty queens, teachers, plumbers, salespeople -- so why not gangsters?
Back in May 1929, America's leading bootleggers, racketeers and hit men gathered in the city of salt-water taffy to do what conventioneers love to do -- talk shop, cut a few deals and have a good time.
The crime lords came from the nation's major cities -- New York, Boston, Detroit, Kansas City, Chicago and Philadelphia -- and represented the major ethnic groups: WASPs, Italians and Jews. Al Capone was there, as were other luminaries such as Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, Meyer Lansky and Frank Nitti. New Jersey was represented by Abner "Longy" Zwillman of Newark and the convention host, Enoch "Nucky" Johnson of Atlantic City.
The gangsters agreed to respect one another's turf, to work together to bribe the authorities and to negotiate disputes peacefully. They also set up a joint telegraph service to handle gambling operations.
Crime experts consider this an important step forward in the development of organized crime in America.
We know a lot of what went on because the convention was not particularly secret. In that era when Prohibition was openly flouted, gangsters had a certain celebrity status. The newspapers described Al Capone in a rolling chair on the boardwalk, smoking a cigar and chatting with his henchmen. Even if the police felt like arresting him, he was not wanted on any charge.
But Capone's career went downhill right after the convention. While on his way back to Chicago, he had to stop in Philadelphia. He was arrested there for carrying a concealed pistol and served a year in jail. Not long after that he went on trial for income-tax evasion.
Other participants in the convention came to a bad end, including suicide, murder, deportation and execution. Maybe they all looked back at those pleasant days in Atlantic City as a golden time in their lives.
New Jersey's elephants
You won't find them in New Jersey anymore, but up until five or 10 thousand years ago, mammoths and mastodons roamed the Garden State.
The fossilized bones and teeth of these extinct members of the elephant family have been unearthed all over New Jersey. The creatures strolled over to North America about 25 million years ago across the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia. They seem to have been particularly fond of the chilly, Ice Age forests of eastern North America, including New Jersey, where they grazed on twigs, branches, pinecones and grass.
Why did mastodons and mammoths die out? There have been many theories. Perhaps it was a change in climate or the development of a genetic defect or the spread of a fatal epidemic. It might also have been the work of some fierce and unrelenting predator who hunted down and killed every last one without concern for the environment or conservation. Guess who?
Yes, in ancient New Jersey, humans may have battled mastodons and mammoths. But is there any evidence? In the late 19th century, two Indian-style pendants were supposedly discovered just over the Jersey border, one in Delaware and the other in Pennsylvania. On each of these was an engraving, presumably done by Indian artists, of a mammoth. The Pennsylvania one even shows the beast smashing through a Native American village.
Over the years, there has been great debate among specialists about whether these artifacts are genuine. Based on radiocarbon dating and other archaeological techniques, the consensus now is that they are not -- that they are sheer forgeries, done by 19th-century hoaxers out to get money or notoriety.
But the fossils that have cropped up in New Jersey for the last few hundred years are genuine and prove that those great, elephantlike beasts once roamed our state. There are, no doubt, more fossils to be found; maybe a dead mastodon is lurking under the zinnia bed next to your patio right now.
From Hell Gate to the Golden Gate Let's hear it for Alice Ramsey of Hackensack, a plucky New Jersey woman who deserves to be remembered for her famous first. In 1909, when she was 22 years old, she became the first female to drive a car from coast to coast -- New York to San Francisco.
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