At the top of First Mountain, Route 280 is cut deep into the dark brown trap rock ridge of the Watchung Mountain range, formed in horizontal igneous layers millions of years ago. The imposing rock wall almost looks man-made, built of rectangular bricks.

This time of year, the other dominant color is forest green, as the blossomed hardwood trees hide surrounding suburban homes and roadways. Here, the entrances and exits of the highway curve and disappear behind the tree-covered mountain cuts.

But as the road descends toward Newark, the steeples and angled rooftops of downtown buildings appear. Cities lie in front of you.

Soon, the road dives below street level and the overpasses whisk by.

Mt. Pleasant and Northfield avenues, Valley and Scotland roads, South Center Street, Hickory and Hillyard streets, South Harrison Avenue, and on and on.

What are not seen are the dozens of streets that once crossed West Orange, Orange, East Orange and Newark, and now dead end at the interstate or its access road, Freeway Drive, east and west.

More invisible are the thousands of homes and businesses that were condemned and demolished to make way for the road -- and the culture and local identity they took with them.

What remains visible are the scars. Almost 50 years after the highway's completion, people still mourn the impact it has had on their hometowns.

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"It cut Orange in half," said Becky Doggett, 75, who now lives in East Orange.

That is the signature statement of everyone connected to a local arts and planning project called "Unearthing the Future: The Art of Reverse Archeology - I-280, Orange, N.J."

The project brings together archeologist Chris Matthews, of Montclair State University, with several community-building nonprofit groups, including the Valley Arts Center, the University of Orange and HANDS, Inc. The idea is to hear stories about old Orange and how the highway changed it, but to also use that history to repair the community fabric the road tore apart.

The study of interstate devastation on urban areas is nothing new. The 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act, sold to the public as necessary for Cold War defense and - God forbid! - evacuation, funded 42,800 miles of interstate highways, linking major cities and turning outlying rural communities into suburbs.

In many cities, highway planners took the path of least resistance -- buy up the cheapest properties from the people least able to fight them.

"Systematic decisions targeted people of low income, people of color and immigrants," Doggett said.

"People didn't know they could negotiate," said Morris Thomas, 80. "They said, 'Well, the government is coming, we got to go.' "

Doggett and Thomas said this while walking around their old neighborhood in Orange for this story. The Hillyer Street overpass is where Thomas' father, Morris Sr., started his barbershop named Shorty's.

"My father was 4-foot-11," Thomas said. "He was 'Shorty' so the name stuck to me."

Shorty's was no ordinary place. The elder Morris studied law and there was a law library beyond the swivel chairs. It also became the headquarters for a civil rights group called the "Non-Profit Organization for Liberal Action" (NOLA).

Doggett, who lived on Parrow Street, was a member.

"We were political. A lot went on in that place," she said.

The south side of Parrow Street is still there. The homes on the north side were demolished, along with several black-owned businesses.

"There was Mr. Fitchett's tailor shop and Mr. Hardy's tailor shop, and Mr. Johnson, the shoemaker," Thomas said.

"And Cobb Dixon's candy store, that's where we used to hang out," Doggett said.

The Route 280 "Reverse Archeology" project came about when Matthews brought his students to research Woody Funeral Home, the oldest continuous black-owned funeral parlor in the state, during its centennial year in 2013. It was then he began to learn not only about the black and Italian neighborhoods gutted by the interstate, but how it essentially created two distinct towns in the 2.2-square-mile city.

"This was not a blighted area at all," Matthews said. "There were two YMCAs and the Friendship House (a community civic and recreation center). There were businesses. The highway came in and took the head off the community."

In the Orange Library vestibule, there is a project exhibit about the interstate construction, its impact and the ways to meld those two separate parts of Orange back into one. Shorty's barbershop and NOLA are featured, as is John's Market, in what was the Italian section.

There is living history in John's Market, started 95 years ago by the Modugno family.

Paul Modugno, 81, a retired Orange fireman, runs the place now and the walls are covered with snapshots of people from the old neighborhood.

"You come in here, it's like a time warp, all right," Modugno said. "Plenty of people come back, but they don't live here anymore."

The most prominent pictures are of Paul's late father, John, showing him with rounds of Italian cheeses hanging over his head, and those of old-time heavyweight contender "Two Ton" Tony Galento, with unconscious opponents at his feet.

"What saved us was the church (Our Lady of Mount Carmel, built in 1902)," Modugno said. "They didn't want to take down the church, so they curved it around. Otherwise, we'd have been gone, too."

But the store is located in what Mindy Fullilove, a professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University, calls a neighborhood "hollowed out by the divestment" caused by city interstates.

"In many places, it left a hole in the city," said Fullilove, 65, who grew up in Orange and now lives in West Orange. She has spent much of her career studying urban displacement and alienation.

"This is a national crisis, because we have cities that are highly fractured, and profoundly divided by race and class," said Fullilove, a co-founder of the University of Orange. "How do we repair that physical and cultural space? I think Orange can be a model city for what all American cities need to do."

The project is a start. "Unearthing the Future" not only asks people to learn about Orange without the highway, but to also envision a better Orange with it. The return is renewed pride in the town.

"The more we talked about what the city used to be, the more the younger folks got interested and became proud of it," Doggett said.

Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.