This month’s topic for the “I’ll Show You My…” Link Up is “My Hometown.” I decided I would share about the town where I grew up, a small town in New Jersey called Berkeley Heights. My parents moved there in the late 1970s because it was close to where my mother worked. (My father took the train and later drove to New York City for his job). Berkeley Heights was named for John Berkeley, one of the founders of New Jersey, and is pretty much unknown by people I meet from New Jersey unless they live in the same general area! Berkeley Heights is 18 miles west of Newark Airport. It is not much farther to New York City.
There is an area of Berkeley Heights listed on the National Register of Historic Places which used to be called Feltville and is now called the Deserted Village. There is also a museum called the Littell-Lord Farmhouse Museum that details early life in Berkeley Heights and is also on the National Register of Historic Places. I’ve never been to either location. Apparently, one of the houses in the Deserted Village has murals painted inside and is on the list of the 10 Most Endangered Historic Sites in New Jersey.
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Every year on July 16, there is a huge fireworks show. There is also a fair held that day and the few days prior. It’s a summer tradition in town to attend the fair and the fireworks. Another summer tradition when I was a kid was going to “the pool.” The Berkeley Heights Community Pool was the place to be!
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Berkeley Heights measures 6.266 square miles. As of 2010, the town was 85% white, 10% Asian, and 1.5% black. I attended public schools in town. Currently, the high school I attended has about 1000 students over 4 grades. My high school has a program for deaf and hard of hearing students and because of that, I was able to take American Sign Language as a class.
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We used to be able to watch Disney and 2nd run films at the Berkeley Cinema, which apparently closed in 2011.
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We could take the train to Hoboken and switch to the PATH train to NYC.
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I lived in two different houses in my hometown and I left when I went to college and then got married!
If you wrote a post about your hometown, link it up here!
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Next month, you can join us on the 3rd Wednesday of the month (July 19) to show us your heritage! Here is our list of future topics: