If you make your way to the top of a rugged, forested hill in the northwestern corner of New Jersey that the local people call Edison’s mountain, you can still find the remains of what was for a few years a century ago a mammoth industrial complex. Empty cellars, quarry pits, and stone walls under the trees mark the site of what may have been Thomas Alva Edison’s most ambitious but least-known project—and his most spectacular failure.

For all Edison’s creative and commercial success and his prodigious production of inventions, he never earned as much of a fortune as others might have. He fell short as a businessman and spent much of his earnings in legal battles, protecting his patents and fending off unscrupulous competitors. He also lost a great deal on the mountaintop at Ogdensburg.

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