Bergen County is the most populous county in both North Jersey and the state and serves as the western terminus for the George Washington Bridge, the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge, which connects Fort Lee, New Jersey to Upper Manhattan in New York City.[5]Newark, located in Essex County, is New Jersey's most populous city. Jersey City, Paterson, and Elizabeth, located in Hudson, Passaic, and Union counties in North Jersey are the second, third, and fourth most populous cities in the state after Newark.
North Jersey has a Humid Continental Climate (Dfb) by Köppen.
Various definitions
One particular definition of North Jersey includes all points in New Jersey north of I-295 in the western part of the state and all points north of I-195 in the eastern part of the state. Another definition uses the old 1956-era 201 telephone area code (not the modern 201 area code) and all its additions, as this area code loosely included all of New Jersey north of Trenton. Some people, especially residents of the northern tier of counties, use a narrower definition, counting only that area north of the mouth of the Raritan River. Conversely, people in the most southern parts of the state and within the Philadelphia metropolitan area (ie South Jersey), when using a two-portion approach that excludes “Central Jersey” as a separate category, may define North Jersey as consisting of Ocean County and every county north of it, essentially placing all New Jersey counties that are within the New York metropolitan area under the definition of North Jersey. The state is also sometimes described as having North Jersey and South Jersey separated from each other by Central Jersey.[6]
Further subdivision
In 2008, the New Jersey State Department of Tourism divided the state into six tourist regions with the Gateway and Skylands regions included in North Jersey.[7]
Counties most consistently defined as North Jersey counties
North Jersey was the site of some of the earliest European settlements in what would become the United States of America. Its colonial history started after Henry Hudson sailed through Newark Bay in 1609. Although Hudson was British, he worked for the Netherlands, so he claimed the land for the Dutch as part of the provincial colony of New Netherland,[8] with original settlements were centered on Bergen (today's Hudson County). In 1664 the region became part of the Province of New Jersey.
During the American Revolutionary War, New Jersey was a strategic location between New York City, and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Important materials necessary to the war effort were produced in North Jersey. The Continental Army made its home here during the war, and history from this period can be found in nearly every village and town in North Jersey. Battle fields, camps, skirmish sites, and headquarters can be found near Morristown and north in the Preakness Valley. In the northwestern part of the state, iron mines and foundries supplied raw material for guns and ammunition.
The Industrial Revolution in America started by the founding of the North Jersey town of Paterson. Today, the United States and the world enjoy the fruit born of seeds planted in North Jersey during the Industrial Revolution. Alexander Hamilton, Secretary for the Treasury and President of the Bank of New York during the end of the eighteenth century, selected the Great Falls area (also known as the Passaic Falls) for an ambitious experiment. He promoted the natural power of the Great Falls as an excellent location for textile mills and other manufacture.
Paterson attracted skilled craftsmen and engineers from Europe to run the mills and produced a large concentration of creative and able people. During the mid nineteenth century, many of the engines and materials that would be used to colonize a continent were made here. Thomas Edison installed one of the first hydroelectric power plants in the world using the Great Falls as an energy source. This power plant still provides electricity today.
In West Orange, Edison created the first technical research and development facility with his "invention factory". Electric light, improved motion pictures, and sound recording, were among the hundreds of inventions produced here.[9]
^ abMikle, Jean (March 31, 2008). "An invisible boundary divides N.J."Home News Tribune. Retrieved January 12, 2010.("Of course, part of the problem with understanding New Jersey's enduring regional tension is that few residents can agree on where the northern half of the state end and the southern half begins.")
^Stirling, Stephen (April 24, 2015). "Here are the North, Central and South Jersey borders as determined by you (INTERACTIVE)". NJ.com. Retrieved December 16, 2015. For one, NJ.com readers overwhelmingly agreed that Central Jersey does, in fact, exist. More than 50,000 of the votes received went toward categorizing Central Jersey towns, far outweighing those received for North and South Jersey.
![The George Washington Bridge, the world's busiest motor vehicle bride, seen from Fort Lee in Bergen County with Upper Manhattan and New York City in the background[5]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/George_Washington_Bridge_from_New_Jersey-edit.jpg/440px-George_Washington_Bridge_from_New_Jersey-edit.jpg)
