New Jersey: A Guide to Its Present and Past

NEW JERSEY is the fourth smallest State in the Union; only Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island are smaller. It has an area of 8,224 square miles, of which 710 square miles are water surface. The State has an extreme length north and south of 166 miles, and an extreme width cast and west of 57 miles.

With the exception of the 50-mile northern boundary from Hudson River to Delaware River, separating it from New York, the State is entirely surrounded by water, 300 miles of which are navigable. It is bounded west and south by the Delaware River and Delaware Bay, dividing it from Pennsylvania and Delaware. On the east it is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Hudson River, Arthur Kill, Kill van Kull, and New York Bay, which separate it from New York.

The State falls naturally into three physical divisions of sharply differentiated scenery. In the north is the mountainous, lake-studded region known as the Appalachian Highlands; in the central, or Triassic section, are gently rolling hills, supporting most of the State's urban and industrial development; and in the large southern Coastal Plain are fruit orchards and market gardens, swamps and pine wastes, miles of beaches and shallow bays.

The Appalachian Highlands section, which extends northwest of a line that might be drawn through Pompton, Morristown, Lebanon and Clinton to Delaware River, includes slightly less than two-fifths of the State's area. Along the northwest border are the level-topped narrow Kittatinny Mountains, which achieve the highest elevation in the State -- 1,805 feet above sea level at High Point. These mountains are part of the Appalachians. Bisecting them is the famous Delaware Water Gap, 900 feet wide at the base and 4,500 feet wide at the top, with sides rising to a height of 1,200 feet or more.

The thickly wooded ridges of this area form a natural park. In Sussex

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