Elizabeth Coleman White

The cultivated blueberry was born in the Pine Barrens too.

In the early 20th century, Elizabeth White, the daughter of a cranberry grower at a place called White's Bog, worked with a botanist from the United States Department of Agriculture, Frederick Coville, to breed wild blueberries into a crop that could be grown and sold commercially.

White offered the people of the Pines money for the best wild blueberry bushes they could find, and Coville crossed and selected them, and in 1916 they produced the first commercial crop of cultivated highbush blueberries.

The blueberry is now New Jersey's official state fruit.