Denville, New Jersey

DENV I LLE TOWNSHI P , NEW JERSEY animals would bask on a knoll that juts out into the meadows where they were hunted by the native Lenape. Others suggest that Denville’s name derives from Daniel Denton, who led an expedition into the interior of northern New Jersey in the late 1600s, and wrote the first English language description of the area. Between 1730 and 1760, several forges and mills were erected in Denville along the Rockaway River and the Denbrook. Denville Village developed around the Job Allen Iron Works, and early developers of Denville, such as the Hussa family and A.B Crane & Co., were also intrinsic in shaping the area’s residential and lake communities. For most of its history, however, Denville was a farming community. It was formed as a township by an act of the New Jersey legislature on April 14, 1913. In the early 1920s and ‘30s, it was a resort town; today it is known as the “Hub of Morris County,” for its transportation routes, including Route 10, Route 53, U.S. Route 46, and Interstate 80, which pass through the township. A mostly residential community, Mayor Thomas Andes says that Denville doesn’t have a lot of industry. “We have three relatively small industrial parks and a community hospital in town that’s our major employer,” he notes. “We also have a lot of hospital-related businesses, so medical is our major industry. We’ve got some other employers, but nothing of great magnitude. We have Anthony & Sons – they supply baked goods for all the restaurants in the area; we’ve got a business that manufactures electronic components; and a plywood manufacturer. They’re good businesses, but nothing in the Fortune 500.” What Denville does have, though, according to Andes, is “a beautiful little downtown. We’re smack in the middle of Morris County, which doesn’t have a lot of downtowns – there are 39 towns and only a handful that have a downtown, which makes us special. It has a very wide main