A quick bike ride to the OG Elsie the Cow’s ‘grave’

Some Central New Jersey trivia: Elsie the Cow of Borden Milk fame is buried is Plainsboro.

I should say “buried” because the grave marker isn’t really over her grave. It’s not even in its original spot.

Still, it was a fun reason for a short bike ride, made longer because of a bridge closure until pretty much the end of 2025.

Even then, it’s just about 5 miles each way from the Princeton Junction train station. Bonus: this route goes past the 1938 version of The War of the World’s Martian “landing” site and a marker commemorating the “event”. Three weird spots in one ride!

It’s a pretty straightforward route, with just three road turns. At the third one, a T intersection running into Plainsboro Road, turn left onto the sidepath and follow it over the railroad tracks and past a large community garden. It becomes a sidewalk at this point but stick with it; you quickly reach a walking path that goes around the Walker Gordon Farm neighborhood. Stay on it past two road entrances and then just after it curves and turns to gravel. look right. There’s an evergreen cut back rather severely so that the path isn’t obstructed and just after it, the gravestone pictured at the top and this plaque:

(If you get lost, you want the walking path at the back of Heron Court.)

So what’s Elsie’s story?

Actually, Elsie started out as an advertising cartoon figure for Borden Milk in the 1930s. And when Borden Milk showed off its “rotolactor,” a milking machine, at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, it sent 150 real cows.

It turned out that most people wanted to know which cow was Elsie. And so one cow named You’ll Do Lobelia was picked to be the first real Elsie, apparently thanks to her big eyes and friendly personality.

She became a celebrity.

Really.

All was great until 1941, when the custom truck the Elsie was traveling in was rear-ended on what today is Route 1 in Rahway, New Jersey. She was badly injured, the doctors couldn’t save her … and she was put down. And another cow took her place as Elsie.

But why Plainsboro?

That’s because of a company called Walker-Gordon Laboratory Co., a Plainsboro dairy that produced unpasteurized whole milk. It also created the rotolactor. Borden liked the machine and bought the company.

Elsie lived on Walker-Gordon farm and then was buried there. But when Walker-Gordon went out of business and the land became a neighborhood called Walker-Gordon, the grave marker was moved to the far edge, along that walking path and next to a pagoda (no idea why that’s there), squeezed by that evergreen shrub that is too big for the spot where it was planted.

Time your bike ride just right and you can check out Elsie memorabilia at Plainsboro’s historical museum, open the second and fourth Sundays of the month just 1.5 miles down Plainsboro Road.

And when you’re next in the grocery story, look for a cartoon Elsie and her daisy flowers on cans of Borden’s Eagle Brand condensed and evaporated milks.

So what about the Martians?

Elsie’s story isn’t the only quirky tale on this ride. Way before Tom Cruise battled the Martians for Hollywood glory, Orson Welles randomly selected Grovers Mill, New Jersey, as the site of the Martian invasion in his radio play. And Grovers Mill is part of West Windsor, home of the Princeton Junction train station.

The action all happens about a mile from the train station. Right after the second traffic light, on your left, is an old red barn that’s now offices and apartments. That’s where the Martians “landed.” In the backyard of the house next door is an old water tower that someone mistook for the Martian spaceship and shot (the damage you see is from a storm a few years ago, not from 1938.)

Just after you curve around past the lake on your right, pull into the park on your right. That’s where the marker is, plus some signage along the path behind it that describe the radio show and its aftermath.

If you want to know more, join the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance plus the Historical Society of West Windsor for their annual Martian bike ride, generally held on the Sunday before Halloween.

Here’s a photo from the 2024 ride: