Toms River, New Jersey

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The Township of Toms River is a large township in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States, and the county seat of Ocean County. On November 7, 2006, voters approved a change of the official name of Township of Dover (or, Dover Township) to the Township of Toms River, effective November 14, 2006.

As of the 2010 United States Census, the township had a total population of 89,706. The United States Census Bureau‘s 2009 population estimate was 109,356, making it one of the fastest growing cities in New Jersey as well as the eighth most populous municipality in New Jersey.

What is now Toms River Township was established by Royal Charter as Dover Township on March 1, 1768, from portions of Shrewsbury Township, while the area was still part of Monmouth County. Dover Township was incorporated as one of New Jersey’s first 104 townships by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on February 21, 1798. Portions of the township were taken to from Jackson Township (March 6, 1844), Union Township (March 10, 1846, now Barnegat Township), Brick Township (February 15, 1850), Manchester Township (April 6, 1865), Berkeley Township (March 31, 1875), Island Heights (May 6, 1887), Lavallette (December 21, 1887) and Seaside Heights (February 26, 1913).

In 2006, Toms River was ranked by Morgan Quitno as the 14th safest “city” in the United States, of 369 cities nationwide.  In 2007 and 2008, Toms River was ranked by CQ Press as the ninth safest “city” in the United States, of the 378 cities nationwide.

Toms River can be seen in various TV and news media including MTV’s Made and Jersey Shore (season 1 and 3), HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and the original The Amityville Horror movie. In 1998, Toms River East Little League won the Little League World Series. The township has what is said to be the second largest Halloween.

Founding and early history

Much of the early history of the village of Toms River is obscured by conflicting stories. Various sources list the eponym of the town as either English captain William Toms, farmer and ferryman Thomas Luker, or a Native American named Tom. The common belief is that Thomas Luker, who ran a ferry across Goose Creek (now the Toms River), is who the town is named after. In the nineteenth century, Toms River became a center for shipbuilding, whaling, fishing, and iron and lumber production.

Toms River was located in the southern section of the Township of Shrewsbury that obtained a royal charter to secede in 1767 and form Dover Township. During the American Revolution, Toms River was home to a strategically important salt works that supplied colonial militias, as well as a base for privateer vessels that plundered British and Tory ships off the coast. In March 1782, a group of British and loyalist soldiers attacked a blockhouse along the river that housed the colonial militia and captured Captain Joshua Huddy, who was later hanged at Sandy Hook. Also destroyed were the salt works and most of the houses in the village.  The incident greatly complicated the tense relationship between the British, loyalist, and colonial and was a factor in prolonging the peace negotiations that were then in progress in Paris until 1783.

The settlement and the river were usually spelled “Tom’s River” in its early days, though its current spelling has been standard since the middle of the 19th century.

The village of Toms River is listed on both the national and state registers of historic places.

Mid 19th and 20th centuries

In 1850, Toms River became the county seat of the newly created Ocean County when it was formed out of southern Monmouth County. During the second half of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th, many new towns were carved out of Dover Township, including Brick, Jackson, Lakewood and Berkeley. The Village of Toms River attempted twice — in 1914 and 1926 to secede from Dover Township, but residents were unsuccessful. The part of Toms River on the south side of the river stretching down to Berkeley Township incorporated as South Toms River in 1927, but the core of the original village on the north side remains part of the wider township to this day.

Mid and late 20th century

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, the demographics of the township changed substantially, adding over 20,000 residents just in the 1990s. While the village is still the center of municipal and county government, the population in the area exploded in the decades after World War II, due in part to the completion of the Garden State Parkway. Whereas the village was the largest and most densely populated section of the township for over two centuries, the vast majority of residents now shop and work in other sections of the town.