Grovers Mill (no apostrophe) is famous for something that didn’t happen 88 years ago. On October 30, 1935, the leading edge of a Martian invasion did not land in Grovers Mill, as reported on the CBS Mercury Theater of the Air. But the town has leaned into the event and celebrates it.
Grovers Mill became famous when Mercury Theater’s producer Howard Koch (who later co-wrote Casablanca) closed his eyes and dropped a pencil point onto a highway map of New Jersey. The point landed on Grovers Mill. Koch liked the way it sounded plus it was close to Princeton University, which fit well into the plot of HG Wells War of the Worlds. So, he, along with Orson Wells, rewrote the radio play around Grovers Mill.
A monument commemorates where the Martians did not land in Van Nest Park on Cranberry Road near the Grovers Mill Pond.
An Eagle Scout project erected historical sign boards along a trail leading from the parking lot to the monument. Across the pond is the actual mill and the tripod which held the water tower that panicked residents may or may not have shot up thinking it was an invading Martian fighting machine.
On the night of the broadcast roads to Grovers Mill were packed with cars full of people rushing into town to see where the meteor that was initially reported in the play had landed. Then, as the story turned, so did the traffic, Cranberry Road was blocked traffic heading out running into traffic heading in. One driver was in such a hurry to get his family out that he drove out of a gas station with the fuel pump hose still attached to his car.
We first visited Grovers Mill more than a decade ago on a tip from The Atlas Obscura. We had some free time on our recent trip to Jersey so I decided we should go back. If you go you need to pay a visit to the Grover’s Mill (apostrophe included) Coffee House and Roastery in nearby West Windsor Township at the intersection of The Princeton Hightstown and Southfield Roads in the Southfield Commons strip mall. It has really good coffee. But it is also an informal museum of War of the Worlds stuff, with letters, newspaper clippings, and War of the Worlds posters. Every year there is a reenactment of the radio play before a live audience at the coffee house. It used to be held at the David Sarnoff Library at Princeton, which I find funny because Sarnoff was the head of rivel network NBC which was running the much more popular Chase and Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy opposite the Mercury Theater. The library closed in 2009 due to lack of funding.
Perhaps I should put a visit to the coffee house on my calendar for 2028, the 90th anniversary of the broadcast.
