Monmouth County Information

Historical Perspective

First settled by migrant New Englanders in 1664, Monmouth County has always been known as a desirable place to live. A long shoreline and many estuaries provided a bounty of clams and fish, and the rich soil of the interior lowlands enabled a varied and generous production of agricultural products.

Monmouth County was formed in 1683 by the Proprietary Assembly, and was named after Monmouthshire, England. The land area of the County of Monmouth is 472 square miles.

Since those early years of Monmouth County's history its population has grown to more than 603,315 people by a 1997 estimate of the Monmouth County Planning Board. The same projections show that more than ninety percent of the privately owned land area has been assessed for development as residential and commercial uses. Such development plans have put severe strains on the natural environment. Among these strains has been the loss of prime farmland. This agricultural land has declined from 198,943 acres in 1890 to only 77,511 acres in 1969 and to 58,732 acres by 1992. The loss continues today as property values and labor costs increase beyond the scope of utilization and competition with other markets.

With the growth of a new environmental ethic has come a public awareness of the many problems facing the County today. Many of the fifty-three municipalities have created environmental, conservation and shade tree commissions and many towns have enacted ordinances regulating wetland preservation and flood plain encroachment. These local regulations have been superseded and augmented by the enactment of Section 404 of the Federal Clean Water Act and the New Jersey Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act.

Many of these locally initiated activities have occurred without an adequate compilation or understanding of the natural environment. Thus there has arisen a need to take stock and catalog the natural areas in the County, to see what has been lost, what remains and what needs to be preserved for the future. The Monmouth County Planning Board is currently conducting this activity and the staff of the Monmouth County Mosquito Extermination Commission is assisting in this process.

County Info Page • Topography • Municipalities • Drainage Patterns • Climate • Mosquito Habitat • Home Page

Monmouth County Mosquito Extermination Commission
PO Box 162 • Eatontown • New Jersey • 07724
(Tel) 732-542-3630 • (Fax) 732-542-3267
mosquitoes@co.monmouth.nj.us