Hackensack, NJ

Remembering where their journeys had begun, the Manhattan Dutchmen who crossed the Hudson to establish a trading post on a lesser river about 4 miles west called their site New Barbados. For 274 years, the name, as well as the architecture of some buildings and institutions retained the Dutch stamp. Not until 1921, in an act traded euphony for a city charter, did New Barbados become Hackensack an Indian term meaning "Place of Sharp Ground." One of the major 20th-century projects in the vicinity was the draining of the tidal marshes known as the Meadowlands, which covered 30 square miles South of Hackensack.