All About New Jersey
New Jersey is a constituent state of the United States of America. One of the original 13 states, it is bounded by New York on the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean on the east and south, and Delaware and Pennsylvania on the west. The state was named for the island of Jersey in the English Channel. The capital is Trenton.
Although it has major social, economic, and political force in its own right, New Jersey is often looked upon as a stepchild among the heavily industrialized and populated Eastern Seaboard states of the United States. Only four states in the nation have a smaller area than its 7,787 square miles (20,169 square kilometres), and only a few states have a larger population. Nonetheless, as a geographic entity and as a human collective, New Jersey suffers from a lack of identity among U.S. states. For the hundreds of thousands of its citizens who commute to New York and Pennsylvania, New Jersey is a vast bedroom state. Its transportation system, one of the busiest and most extensive in the world, is primarily a funnel for goods and people moving to New York City and other points north and to Philadelphia and Delaware and to points south. For hundreds of thousands of visitors it offers long stretches of fine beaches along the Atlantic Ocean, and the resort of Atlantic City may be better known than the state itself.
New Jersey is called the Garden State because it was famous for its fertility in the 18th century; it is now also among the most urbanized and crowded of states. The urban density of its northeast contrasts sharply, however, with the rugged hills of the northwest and with the enormous stretches of pine forest in the southeast and the rolling and lush horse country in the south central part of the state. New Jersey is an important industrial centre, but it has paid the price in environmental pollution, in dirt and noise, and in congested roads and slums. In sum, New Jersey is a curious amalgam of the urban and rural, the poor and wealthy, the progressive and backward, the parochial and cosmopolitan. Indeed, it is one of the most diverse states in the Union.
New Jersey comprises four distinct physical regions: the Ridge and Valley section of the northwest, where the folded Appalachians slice across the state; the New England section, a southern extension of the ancient rocks of New England, which also trend across the state in a northeast–southwest direction; the rolling central Piedmont, where many of the major cities and suburbs are located; and the relatively level Atlantic Coastal Plain, which is divided into an inner and an outer portion. It is in the Outer Coastal Plain, with its relatively poor, sandy soils, that the Pine Barrens are located. The best soils are located on the Inner Coastal Plain and on the Piedmont and in valleys in the New England section south of the last glacial advance. Although suburbanization is rapidly devouring New Jersey's agricultural land, substantial estates and farms still exist in parts of the Piedmont, and truck farms still dominate many parts of the southern Inner Coastal Plain. Elliptic tracks reveal prosperous horse farms in the northern Inner Coastal Plain, and dairying still exists in the Ridge and Valley section. The most striking features of the state are its beaches, the Pine Barrens, the Palisades facing Manhattan, the broad marshes and swampland in the northeast, and the hills of the northwest, including the famous Delaware Water Gap.
Alexander Hamilton's attempt in 1791 to build the nation's first industrial town at Paterson was a failure. He had the right idea, however, for New Jersey was destined to become an industrial giant. The State Division of Economic Development, along with the major utilities and business organizations, conducts an effective program of selling New Jersey to industry. The state has attracted many industries, especially corporate headquarters from New York City, largely through its greater space, better transportation, and favourable tax rates. The spread of industry and housing, however, has cost New Jersey much of its farmland, the most valuable per acre in the nation.
New Jersey's rich traditions are manifested in such historic homes and sites as the Rockingham State Historic Site, Washington's winter headquarters near Princeton, where he wrote his farewell address to the Continental Army; Morven, the home of Richard Stockton, signer of the Declaration of Independence, in Princeton; the restored colonial villages of Batsto and Allaire; and the Camden home of poet Walt Whitman. These and other historic sites attract thousands of tourists each year. The state also operates a system of parks, forests, recreation areas, natural areas, and marinas. The resort industry is a big factor in New Jersey's economy, especially in the south, where a bad year at the Shore hurts the economic well-being of the entire region. In 1976, residents of New Jersey approved a constitutional amendment to permit gambling casinos at Atlantic City, which, with its huge Convention Hall and fine hotels, does a thriving winter convention business. Casinos are taxed, and tax moneys go to senior citizens and the disabled.
Since colonial days, when New Jersey's toll roads linking Philadelphia and New York City were a major industry, transportation has been the lifeblood of New Jersey's economy, and its role in New Jersey can best be appreciated in the Newark area. There, 12 lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike converge with the main line of the Penn Central Railroad, Newark Airport, Port Newark, and Port Elizabeth to provide a steady stream of goods and people. The economy of northern New Jersey is bound tightly to that of New York City, and the commercial traffic between the two states is the nation's heaviest. The Port Authority, as it is known, is a public corporation operating Newark and Teterboro airports in New Jersey and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, three bridges, huge piers, bus and rail lines, and truck terminals. A similar but much smaller transit complex exists in the Camden area, linking the South Jersey area with Philadelphia. There is a deepwater port at Camden on the Delaware and high-speed transit to Philadelphia. The turnpike runs 132 miles (212 kilometres), the length of the state from the George Washington Bridge in the north to the Delaware Memorial Bridge in the south; the Garden State Parkway stretches 152 miles (245 kilometres) north to south; and the Atlantic City Expressway runs 44 miles (71 kilometres) to connect Atlantic City with the Camden area. Even before World War II, New Jersey had one of the finest road networks in the nation.
