Cranberry Lake NJ - History

CRANBERRY STATE LAKE | NJ - HISTORY

The story of Cranberry Lake begins when the New Jersey Legislature passed an act on December 31, 1824, incorporating the Morris Canal and Banking Company to form an artificial waterway capable of navigation between the Passaic and Delaware rivers.

Such waterway included a body of water then known as Cranberry Pond located in Byram Township. Around 1836, the Morris Canal and Banking Company expanded the pond, and built a 200-acre Lake, known as Cranberry Reservoir or Cranberry Lake to be used as a feeder for the canal in times of drought. In 1922, the Morris Canal passed into the hands of the State of New Jersey, but title to the canal property and water rights continued to be vested in the Company “in trust for the state of New Jersey”.

Once the canal operations formally ended, Cranberry Lake became a public lake open for recreational purposes (e.g. fishing, boating, swimming). During the first decade of the Twentieth Century, Cranberry Lake was the focus of weekend vacation traffic, brought by the Lackawanna Railroad to the shores of Cranberry Lake which included a hotel and nearby amusement park.

All this activity ended in 1911, when the Cranberry Lake Hotel burned down and the railroad’s excursions ended. Ten years later, property around the lake began to be subdivided, sold, and summer cottages where built which, over the years, eventually evolved into the present day year round community what we know today.