Learning New Jersey Geography

Barry A. Klinger
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I've been visiting relatives in central New Jersey for virtually my entire life, and I still didn't understand its geography.

What is a "township"? Is it different than a "town"? Where does one end and the next one begin? Why was my aunt's house in Monroe in a different county than my parent's house 20 minutes away in Marlboro?

Like most states, New Jersey is subdivided into counties. The counties are mostly subdivided into townships, which turn out to be larger than towns and can include rural land on the outskirts of town. Smaller municipal units on the same level as "township" is "borough" and "city". I still do not quite understand the difference between a "borough" and a "city".

To illustrate all this, I made a map showing townships, boroughs and cities. All the units in a given county are in roughly the same color. Major roads and highways are included. After all, the cliche is that when people from New Jersey meet they don't ask which town they are from, but "which exit are you off of?" As an added layer of information, I shaded each township/borough/city based on population density.

As far as I know, no other map shows the townships, counties, and roads of Central Jersey as clearly as the map above. The map is designed to be clearly readable when full-screen on a laptop. I can just barely make out the smallest print when shrunk to half-screen or when the entire map is visible on my phone (turned sideways to "landscape" orientation).

The map showed that I had many geographical misconceptions. Since New Brunswick is a city and the home of the state university (Rutgers), I assumed it was larger than suburban East Brunswick. Turns out it is the other way around. Similarly I thought Old Bridge and Colts Neck were tiny little towns, but they turned out to be relatively large townships.

I had never even heard of a township called "Upper Freehold." No wonder, the population density shows that hardly anyone lives there, and it does not touch Freehold Township. Other than Upper Freehold, no township in Monmouth or Middlesex counties is in the category of smallest population density. I thought that higher density areas would be closest to New York City and Philadelphia, but the pattern is more complex. The coast has a relatively high density, and so does the area near Staten Island (New York). A group of high-population townships in Mercer County are practically surrounded by lower-density regions. I do not know why these are more crowded. They are not adjacent to either NYC or Philadelphia.