By Steve Sears

Ruth Height remembers the sad, May 9, 1957 morning.

Her dad, William Wolfe, and her uncle, Herbert Wolfe, then owners of Mount Olive’s former Wolfe Farm, were doing their daily 5 a.m. walking of 40 cows across what was then Route 6, a single lane highway in both directions.

Height, then a sophomore in high school, recalls the details. “This tractor trailer came down from the hill, coming up out of Hackettstown, and it just never stopped. According to him (the driver), he said he didn’t see the herd until it was too late. How do you miss black and white cows, a whole bunch of them, going across the road in front of you?” 

He also didn’t see William, who was frantically waving his flashlight to alert the truck, and then dove out of harm’s way at the last second, unable to “steer’ the driver away from an unfortunate collision with the herd.

“He (William) came into the house and screamed for my mom to call the police,” says Height, who was awakened by her dad’s yelling. “And then out he went again, back down to the highway to take care of the animals and get them back up to the barn, as many who could walk and be taken care of. Meanwhile, there were a whole bunch laid out all over the highway.” 

Nine Wolfe Farm cows were killed that dawn.

Afterwards, discussion ensued about a safer way to get the cows across the highway, which was becoming busier, especially when the road was widened and became Route 46 in the early 1960s. “My father and my uncle decided that it was inappropriate and unsafe for them to get the cows to the other side of the road and get them there safely and back,” says Height. 

The answer? An existing tunnel under Route 46 through which the South Branch of the Raritan River flowed, which was large enough for the rise and fall of the rapidly flowing water, but not high enough at that time for a herd of cows en masse and two farmers to walk and wade through. The Wolfes had the solution, negotiating to have the tunnel riverbed deepened for the extra needed room. “And that spot,” says Height, “if you go west from Wolfe Road right on Route 46, it’s I want to say a little dip in the road, and that’s where that bridge is.”

It was a learning process, especially for the cows. William and Herbert had to take one of their lead cows – or sometimes two, or three, or four – and lead them across one by one, and as they would get one across, the other person would bring another cow, and little by little, the rest of the herd followed them over. “But it took several days for that to just happen automatically,” says Height.

The path to the tunnel area today on the Route 46 East side is overgrown with shrubs and other wild foliage, so visitation to the spot is not encouraged.

Height herself while growing up walked all over the Wolfe Farm property, which was sold by the family in 1981, but she never walked under the bridge. Her dad and uncle were the ones whose feet got wet. “They had to put their boots on and trek over there every night, and then every morning to bring them back,” she recalls.