100 years ago three boroughs were born while a township 'died'

Modern-day representatives of a once-sprawling township stretched to the breaking point by a trio of influential commercial centers are set to unite at Passaic County Community College's Wanaque campus later this month. 

The Feb. 23 event dubbed the Tri-Town Centennial Kick Off Celebration will celebrate the coinciding centennials of Ringwood, Bloomingdale and Wanaque, triplet boroughs born by acts of the state legislature in 1918.

Invariably, the ghost of Pompton Township will also attend. 

One of New Jersey's original municipalities, Pompton Township covered roughly one quarter of Passaic County before its final fracture 100 years ago. The pull of the 45-square-mile township's dispersed communities became too much for the central government to bear, said Tom Riley, a Bloomingdale historian and former adjunct professor at Sussex County Community College.

"They co-existed when everything was rural for everybody, but as soon as things started becoming built up ... they wanted their tax money to be spent in their locale," Riley said. 

From 1890 to 1910, Pompton Township's population doubled to 4,050. Rubber production in Butler, once known as West Bloomingdale, loomed large in Bloomingdale. Farming and iron mining near the New York State border ran the still-rural Ringwood region. And smokeless powder and blasting cap plants fueled by the Wanaque River spurred development along Ringwood Avenue in Haskell and Midvale.

"It wasn't uncommon for large townships to split," said Ralph Colfax of the New Jersey Highlands Historical Society. "They were pulled by the things that were happening in their areas and I think it became quite evident to the local residents that they could more efficiently handle their local needs by splitting into the three new boroughs."

Centennial celebrations

The 7 p.m. event at the county college's Wanaque Academic Center this month is due to feature speakers, presentations, memorabilia displays, and slide shows on the history of each borough. The following day, Bloomingdale and Wanaque are set to host outdoor fairs.  

Wanaque has a noon to 6 p.m. celebration set for the Wanaque First Aid Squad. Bloomingdale is due to open Sloan Park that afternoon for locals to enjoy a temporary ice-skating rink, horse-and-carriage rides, and history exhibits at the adjacent United Methodist Church featuring an old canoe found in Glen Wild Lakes that Riley said may predate Pompton Township.

"You only get to 100 once in a lifetime," Riley said. "We’ve been meeting for over a year to plan all this stuff." 

Planning Pompton Township's final split also took some time. Discussion started in 1915, when residents from the Wanaque section of Haskell hatched a plan to split off the business district along Ringwood Avenue, Colfax said.

Toxic Legacy:DuPont in Pompton Lakes timeline (1902-today)

DuPont's secret:Toxic Secrets: Growing up in Pompton Lakes

More:Toxic Secrets: How poisonous chemicals from a DuPont factory wound up beneath 400 homes

"Ringwood - which is still rural, still based on the mining; the Ringwood Company - for them to think their tax money to Pompton Township is being spent all the way over in Bloomingdale, it probably didn’t make much sense to them and vice-versa too," Riley said.

The split came naturally and amicably, Colfax said. Still, drawing the boundary lines and dividing Pompton Township's school district, assets, and debt took several years. 

"It's something that evolved over time but was a win-win for all three towns," Colfax said. 

Final fracture

On Feb. 23, 1918, three separate acts of the state legislature created the boroughs. Each meticulously demarcated the new borders and set guidelines for a March 22 public referendum that confirmed the split.

The description of Ringwood’s border started at a point in the boundary line between Passaic and Bergen counties abutting the edge of a 1,612-acre plot once owned by a Japanese national named Heitaro Fujita, records show. 

One of the largest landowners around, Fujita eventually had some of his Passaic County land condemned for the construction of the North Jersey District Water Supply commission’s Wanaque Reservoir. The rest was seized by the federal government's Alien Property Custodian during World War II.

Though construction on the Wanaque Reservoir did not begin until 1920, the lake is the feature most synonymous with its namesake borough. The 2,300-acre reservoir’s $25 million dam was built at the location of the Wanaque River Paper Company owned by Robert D. Carter, Wanaque’s first mayor (1918-1920). 

The 1918 split was Pompton Township's last, but not its first. West Milford Township split off in 1834. Pompton Lakes left in 1895 to become Passaic County's example of a phenomenon more readily connected with 1894 Bergen County known as "boroughitis." 

Bergen's boroughitis

Initially dubbed "borough fever," boroughitis brought the number of Bergen County municipalities from 20 in 1893 to 46 in 1894. 

Many of the newly-created boroughs were sought in reaction to a new law that eliminated more than 1,000 school districts by requiring consolidation within each New Jersey township. Parents were motivated to retain local control of their schools, while taxpayers did not want to assume responsibility for the debt amassed by a neighboring district.

Other boroughs were shaped by a supplement to the Borough Act of 1878. Enacted in 1894, the amendment allowed boroughs forming from parts of two or more townships to gain representation on their County Board of Chosen Freeholders. 

Newspaper reports from 1894 point to a desire by politically-minded borough-makers for control over schools, the Bergen County Freeholder board, and local government jobs.

In other places, boroughs were formed as farmers in sparsely-funded rural areas sought to avoid investments in public infrastructure at service-hungry commuter hubs, Colfax said.

Pompton Lakes' play

In Pompton Lakes, residents of the area's new summer estates initiated the split to shed what residents thought was undue taxation from Pompton Township. At the start of 1895, the 1,880-acre lakes area contributed a third of the township's total taxes. 

"Taxpayers within the limits of the new borough have been assessed for road and poor taxes, though there are no paupers within their boundary, nor roads, excepting those under care of the county," reads a Feb. 25, 1895 article in the New York Times, records show. 

The split confirmed by state legislators on Feb. 26, 1895 caught opposition from other township residents, including the wealthiest and most politically influential landowners, the Hewitt and Cooper families of Ringwood, the article continued.

The new borough took on its portion of Cooper Union bonds amassed by the township during rail construction to Greenwood Lake, according to state records. Pompton Lakes added $3,000 in debt for the construction of a new school house, records show. 

By early 1895, state legislators slowed boroughitis by requiring petitions for referendums to be signed by owners of 50 percent of the taxable real estate in the boundaries of the proposed borough. Another amendment required boroughs to have at least 400 children to separate. 

Within two years, state lawmakers resolved to reserve the creation of boroughs to special acts of the legislature rather than via local petition and referendum. 

While Pompton Lakes was Passaic County's only example of the phenomenon, boroughitis helped bring the number of Bergen County municipalities from eight (all townships) in 1849 to 70 today.

Every township in that county was impacted in some way by the phenomenon, most notably South Hackensack. The township comprises three widely separated sections of what was once Lodi Township. 

As of 2014, New Jersey has 565 municipalities, more than eight other states combined. New Jersey also has the highest number of municipalities per capita of any state. 

Staff writer Jai Agnish contributed to this article.