The number of stores and restaurants downtown has decreased, and when county offices close up there is little street life. Crime has gone down in the last five years, but gang activity is up, according to a survey released by state police last year that found about 600 members of 14 different gangs in the city.
The 1,100-acre park has always been Bridgeton's jewel. The desecration of the Civil War statue, discovered Dec. 6, is painful, said Mayor Albert Kelly.
"It is where we all go to have some peace," Kelly said. "We have had so little crime there. It's the place Bridgeton honors, no matter what else is going on."
Ott said the musket from the eight-foot-tall Georgia Ebony granite statue was found near the piece's 14-foot base. The head, partly mutilated, showed up a few days later in a ditch several hundred yards away.
"There had been rain not long before, and it was probably buried in a puddle," said Ott, who believes the vandals did not realize how heavy the head was and just dropped it. He said the department has offered a $100 reward for information leading to an arrest. "I believe we will eventually find out who did it."
A circular drive connects the sites in the park. The Veterans Park section, which has the Civil War statue and monuments to all the major wars since then, is the first opening off the drive. There is also a small zoo, where admission fees are deposited in an honor box; bike and hiking trails; and the new Jim Hursey Memorial Stadium, lovingly named after a deceased maintenance man.
The statue was installed in 1915, the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, and placed elsewhere in the park. It was moved to its current site in the 1930s, according to Bridgeton Recreation Director Melissa Hemple.
