This secret New Jersey village has been sitting in a forest since before America existed

Deep in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey, an entire village sits inside Wharton State Forest, looking much the way it did over 200 years ago. Batsto Village dates back to 1766, and you can walk through more than 40 historic structures, from a working sawmill to a 32-room mansion to one of the oldest post offices in the country.

The whole place landed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the grounds stay open dawn to dusk. But the real surprise is what they used to make here, and who they made it for.

He pulled bog iron from the local streams, burned charcoal from the surrounding forest, and ran the whole operation on water power from the Batsto River.

During the Revolutionary War, Batsto supplied cannons, cannonballs, and camp kettles to the Continental Army.

George Washington himself ordered custom firebacks from the village in 1787, and two of them still sit at Mount Vernon today.

Right at the heart of the village, the Batsto Mansion stands where generations of ironmasters lived. He also added indoor plumbing and central heating, both cutting-edge for the time.

The Richards family built it in the late 1700s, and Joseph Wharton renovated it in 1878 with Italianate and Eastlake touches that the Victorian upper class loved.

Here’s the thing: it never got a zip code because of its status as a historic structure. Every stamp gets hand-canceled right at the counter.

You can bring your own pre-stamped letters or postcards and walk out with a Batsto postal cancellation you won’t find anywhere else. The only other post offices without zip codes sit in Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and Hodgenville.

The Glass Museum sits attached to the post office, and inside you’ll find 19th- and 20th-century glass made right here in the Pine Barrens.

Historic artifacts pulled from across the village fill the rest of the display cases. Next door, the General Store first opened in 1784 and once stocked everything the village needed to keep running.

Today it works as a museum where you can see what daily life looked like in a self-contained company town where nobody had to leave for much of anything.

Before a major fire swept through in 1874, about 80 houses filled this small neighborhood. Some of the cottages that survived stay open for you to walk through.

Down the road, the blacksmith and wheelwright shop shows where workers shoed horses and repaired farming tools.

A stone barn built from local ironstone in 1828 once housed mules and stored hay, and you can still see the thick walls up close.

Batsto’s water-powered gristmill went up in 1828, originally turning on a wooden water wheel. In 1882, a more efficient water turbine replaced it, and that turbine is still in place today.

The mill ground wheat, corn, and other grains that ended up for sale at the General Store. The sawmill, dating to the Wharton era, got repaired and runs again as of 2025.

On select days, you can watch live demonstrations and see the sawmill cut through lumber the same way it did over a century ago.

The Annie M. Carter Interpretive Center sits on the banks of Batsto Lake with displays on Pine Barrens wildlife and plant life, including preserved specimens and hands-on exhibits.

Guided canoe trips on the lake run through the nature center, and the water is calm enough for beginners. The lake itself is a good spot for picnicking, fishing, and watching for wildlife along the shore.

All around you, pitch pine forests, Atlantic white cedar swamps, and tea-colored streams rich in iron fill out the landscape.

Two canoe launches sit a short distance west of the village on Route 542. Picnic areas and open fields around the village give you space to relax and watch for wildlife.

Unpaved roads through the forest stay open for mountain biking and horseback riding if you want to cover more ground.

The forest is part of the Pinelands National Reserve, the first national reserve in the country, covering about 1.1 million acres.