New Milford

New Milford is both the "Birthplace of Bergen County" and one of the county's youngest municipalities--a paradox that lends charm to this neighborly suburb of neatly kept homes, redbrick schools, and spirited parades.

Ninety-nine years before American independence, David Demarest Sr., a French Huguenot, received the patent to a swath of land along the Hackensack River that became the region's first permanent European settlement. Level in terrain and dotted with vegetable fields, what we know as New Milford would not officially be named that until 1922, when 316 voters in several sleepy hamlets decided overwhelmingly to create a new borough. With the return of servicemen from World War II, the construction of houses and garden apartments on former farmland drove a near tripling of the population in the 1950s. Through photographs and other materials collected from private and public archives and current and former residents, New Milford chronicles the story of a forward-thinking bedroom community that proudly celebrates--and diligently preserves--its past.