Millbrook Village is a re-creation of a turn-of-the-century village. Together with the U.S. National Park Service, the Millbrook Village Society works to show the way of life of a typical town during the 1850-1900 time period. Park rangers and volunteer crafts persons in period costumes demonstrate period skills, and several original Millbrook structures are open for visits. School programs and tours can be accommodated as staffing permits. Open from late June – to October, Various; Various buildings are open to the public between 10 AM and 4 PM. The number of facilities open for visitation is strictly dependent on the number of volunteers available on that day.
Being a part of the National Park Service, the northern New Jersey, New Jersey village can be visited for a stroll all year, seven days a week. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day on Saturdays and Sundays, a blend of NPS and volunteer personnel demonstrate the rafts and activities of a typical village. Millbrook Village in New Jersey has had about the same number of buildings as around 1900. The roadbed of the old turnpike is now the main “street” running southwest to northeast through the village. Many of the original buildings were replaced, and, in the 1970s, other structures were moved here as outbuildings for the town.
In the 1950s, the Columbia–Walpack Turnpike was realigned to accommodate stream impoundments one mile south at Watergate, and the crossroads at the heart of the village was lost. Auto traffic now bypassed the town, following the paved route of today’s Old Mine Road. The city comes alive each year on the first weekend in September for Millbrook Days, when more than 150 volunteers of the Millbrook Village Society demonstrate crafts and skills of rural living in the young nation. The event is held rain or shine.
Local farmers who took their grain to the Abram Garris grist mill when it began operating in 1832 found that within a few years, a blacksmith shop and general store had been built near the mill. Knowing that farmers frequenting the mill could use their services, other tradespeople soon opened businesses. Millbrook was born in northern New Jersey, NJ.
Millbrook grew from these beginnings until just after the Civil War, when the village reached its peak of 19 buildings and approximately 75 residents. The townspeople supplied the needs of the farmers in the surrounding countryside. Men, women, and children worked long and hard in their homes and fields. What they could not grow or make themselves could obtain through barter at the general store or with one of the local tradespeople.
The latter half of the 19th century brought technological advances to much of the United States. Isolated by its location between the Delaware River and a ridge of mountains, Millbrook did not adapt. The old mill was less efficient than new ones elsewhere, and small farmers could not compete with specialized agriculture. The railroad bypassed Millbrook, taking the business to other towns, and young people moved to cities where they earned cash wages. Tradespeople moved to communities where they could find customers. Millbrook began to decline. EZ Bed Bug Exterminator NJ
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