meeting house road, washington township nj

Philip Cox may have arrived here as early as 1727, the year he bought 200 acres betwixt the first and second mountain called the Blue Hills. To the south, pioneers from the lowlands moved through Lincoln Gap (Somerset Street, Watchung) and into Washington Valley. Farmers from New Providence Followed the Passaic River into what is now Union Village and Smalleytown.

The Lenape Indians roamed these parts for thousands of years before the Europeans came, but they left little history a few arrowheads and grinding stones have been found along the Passaic River Dock Watch Hollow is the only locale that bears an Indian name.Įnglish and Scots-Irish from Turkey (now New Providence) and Scotch Plains first settled the township in the 1720s.

These exposed basaltic edges, now much weathered, are the First and Second Mountains between them lies a broad, fertile valley through which flows the Middle Brook. Then, gradually, imperceptibly, during the millions of years that followed this massive shifting of the earth, water eroded away the land, exposing the jutting edges of the buried lava. The Watchung Mountains, whose natural beauty characterizes the township, came into being 125 million years ago when volcanic eruptions to the west covered the area with two thick lava flows that later were tilted upwards 20 degrees. Now encompassing an area of 19.3 square miles, Warren was half again as large before 1872, the year the communities now known as North Plainfield, Green Brook, and Watchung were carved from its landmass. The Introduction to Images of America - Warren TownshipĬalled by one early author the greenest place in New Jersey, Warren Township stretches from the crest of the First Watchung Mountain across Washington Valley to the Second Mountain and beyond, ending at the Dead and Passaic Rivers.

Meeting house road, washington township nj