New Jersey |
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| Entered the Union: December 18, 1787 (3) | Capital: Trenton | |
| Origin of Name: from the British Channel Isle of Jersey | ||
| State Nickname: Garden State | State Tree: Red Oak | |
| State Song: "I'm From New Jersey" | State Bird: Eastern Goldfinch | |
| State Motto: Liberty and Prosperity | State Flower: Purple Violet | |
| State Forests: 11 • State Parks: 40 | State Mammal: Horse | |
| Famous For: Princeton University, Tourist Resorts | ||
| Famous New Jerseyites: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Jerry Lewis (comedians), Edwin Aldrin (astronaut), Aaron Burr (Vice President), Count Basie (jazz), Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen (musicians), William J. Brennan, Antonin Scalia (US Supreme Court), Grover Cleveland (President), Stephen Crane (writer), Albert Einstein (scientist), Richard Nixon (President), H. Norman Schwarzkopf (general), Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston, Paul Simon (singers), Jack Nicholson, John Travolta, Bruce Willis (actors) | ||
| Animals and Birds: Click on photos of the animals and birds on this page to find out more about them and to hear the sounds they make. | ||
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| Native Americans from the Delaware tribe lived in New Jersey when Europeans explorers first arrived. They built villages along the Delaware River, spending most of their time hunting and planting corn, beans, and other crops for food. | |||||||||||||
| In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up the Hudson River and claimed New Jersey and New York for the Dutch. Originally colonized by the Dutch, New Jersey, combined with New York, became a British colony after the Dutch surrendered to Britain in 1664. In 1738, New Jersey was separated from New York under its own royal governor. | |||||||||||||
| New Jersey has over 50 resort cities and towns, some of the nations most famous, Asbury park, Wildwood, Atlantic City, Seaside heights, Cape May. | |||||||||||||
| New Jersey has developed wide industrial diversification and is known as the "Crossroads of the East." Products from over 15,000 factories can be delivered overnight to almost 60 million people in 12 states. The greatest single industry is chemicals; New Jersey is one of the foremost research centers in the world. | |||||||||||||
| New Jersey has nearly as many horses per square mile as Kentucky. | |||||||||||||
| New Jersey is completely surrounded by water except for about 40 miles along the NY border. | |||||||||||||
| The Statue Of Liberty is located within the state boundary of New Jersey. | |||||||||||||
| The first Indian reservation was in New Jersey. | |||||||||||||
| The first baseball game was played in Hoboken in 1846. New Jersey also hosted the first college football game in 1869 and the first professional basketball game in 1896. | |||||||||||||
| The first drive-in movie theater opened in 1933 outside of Camden. | |||||||||||||
| New Jersey is a leading industrial state and is the largest chemical producing state in the nation. | |||||||||||||
| New Jersey is home to the Miss America pageant held in Atlantic City. | |||||||||||||
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Street names in the game Monopoly are all taken from actual streets in Atlantic City. |
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| North Jersey has more shopping malls in one area than anywhere else in the world. There are seven major malls located in a 25 square mile radius. | |||||||||||||
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New Jersey has the most dense system of highways and railways in the United States. |
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| New Jersey is the nation's most densely populated state with an average of about 1,260 people per square mile (13 times the national average). | |||||||||||||
| Modern paleontology, the science of studying dinosaur fossils, began in 1858 with the discovery of the first nearly-complete skeleton of a dinosaur in Haddonfield, New Jersey. | |||||||||||||
| The light bulb, and motion picture projector were invented by Thomas Edison in his Menlo Park laboratory. He was dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park" after inventing the phonograph (record player). | |||||||||||||
| New Jersey ranks high in the production of almost all garden vegetables. It also produces cranberries, blueberries and peaches. | |||||||||||||
| In 1935, the police in Atlantic City, New Jersey, arrested 42 men on the beach. They were cracking down on topless bathing suits worn by men. | |||||||||||||
| Atlantic City is home to the longest boardwalk in the world. | |||||||||||||
| The state seashell, the knobbed whelk, (Busycon carica gmelin) is found on all beaches and bays of New Jersey. | |||||||||||||
| About one-sixth of all drugs manufactured in the United States come from New Jersey. | |||||||||||||
| New Jersey's Ethnic Roots: Italian 17.9%, Irish 15.9%, African 13.6%, German 12.6%, Polish 6.9%. | |||||||||||||
| Religion in New Jersey: 64% Christian (37% Catholic, 27% Protestant), 15% No Religion, 4% Jewish, 1% LDS, 1% Jehovah's Witness, 1% Muslim | |||||||||||||
| Lucy the Elephant, located in Margate, was constructed in 1881 as a marketing gimmick by a land speculator. Lucy stands six-stories tall, and weighs 90 tons. | |||||||||||||
| New Jersey is the only state without self-serve gas stations. Attendants must pump your gas according to state law. | |||||||||||||
At a Glance
New Jersey Quick Facts
| Entered the Union | December 18, 1787 (3) |
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| Capital | Trenton |
| Nickname | Garden State |
| State Bird | Eastern Goldfinch |
| State Flower | Purple Violet |
| State Tree | Red Oak |
New for 2026
More New Jersey Facts & Photos
The Pinelands became the country's first national reserve in 1978. The 1.1-million-acre expanse of pine forest, cedar swamps, and tea-colored streams across southern New Jersey was also named a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1983.
Sandy Hook Lighthouse was completed in June 1764 to guide ships into New York Harbor. Every other colonial-era light has since been lost to war, storms, erosion, or replacement, leaving it the oldest operating lighthouse in the United States.
The Great Falls of the Passaic River drop 77 feet at Paterson, where Alexander Hamilton helped found the nation's first planned industrial city in the 1790s. The falls became a national historical park in 2011.
On Christmas night 1776, George Washington ferried his army across the ice-choked Delaware River and surprised the Hessian garrison at Trenton the next morning, capturing nearly 1,000 soldiers at a cost of only four American lives.
Each May and June, Delaware Bay hosts the largest spawning gathering of horseshoe crabs in the world. Their eggs feed red knots, shorebirds that stop over on migrations from South America to the Arctic.
Voices of America
In Their Own Words
"The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations."
Letter to
Brig. General Thomas Nelson
Aug. 20, 1778
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."
Last updated: July 2026