New Jersey Summary

New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the United States, with nearly two out of three of its 8 million citizens living within 30 miles of New York City in the urban sprawl that begins south in Elizabeth and travels north through Jersey City, Newark, and Paterson. All of its 21 counties are classified officially as “metropolitan.”

It may surprise some to learn there are wilderness areas throughout the state, such as the Great Swamp, a 7,400-acre refuge of marshes and wetlands not far west of New York City. The Appalachian Mountains cut through the state’s northwestern corner. The Appalachian Trail, the nation’s premier wilderness pathway, follows the Appalachian Mountains’ ridge line for 2,160 unbroken miles from Georgia to Maine, and parallels the Delaware River and the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. The Pine Barrens region of southern New Jersey offers a range of savannas, swamps, and hardwood forests in a wilderness that is largely pristine.

New Jersey’s urban centers may be the butt of jokes in New York comedy clubs, but there are some delightful places. The Atlantic seashore here, with its summer cottages, boardwalks, and seaside communities, offers year-round recreation, while Atlantic City receives more than 37 million visitors a year who try their luck in the casinos that line its boardwalk. New Jersey’s rolling hills and lakes in the northwest, down through the state’s center, with its wealth of well-preserved Revolutionary War monuments (much of the war was fought on New Jersey soil), and further south to the wilderness of Pine Barrens and the delights of the Atlantic seashore all combine to ensure that the fifth-smallest state in the Union can be proud of its heritage and not simply be regarded as a cultural adjunct of New York City.