HISTORY OF THE MEADOWLANDS:
Pre-Historic Conditions | European Settlement | Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries |
Nineteenth Century | Twentieth Century | The Advent of Comprehensive Planning
Twenty First Century

Pre-Historic Conditions

The Meadowlands basin was formed by the Wisconsin Glacier about 20,000 years ago.  The ice about 2000 feet deep stretched all the way to Perth Amboy (terminal moraine).  When the ice sheet began to melt and retreat it gouged out the area between the Palisades and the ridge along Schuyler Avenue.   This melt water formed a deep freshwater lake known as Glacial Lake Hackensack.  Approximately 10,000 years ago the lake breached at the terminal moraine in Perth Amboy and began to drain.  The area became a freshwater drained by the Hackensack River.  After many centuries of rising sea levels, the river was exposed to the tides of the Atlantic Ocean, forming the estuary.

At the time of the earliest known human presence in the Mid-Atlantic region 10,500 years ago, sea level was approximately 80 feet lower than today. The Atlantic shoreline was 40 miles to the east of its present location. The Meadowlands was a broad, forested valley crossed by numerous, meandering, freshwater streams.

From about 8,000 to 3,000 years ago, a warmer climate changed the biotic community of the Meadowlands. The Meadowlands was covered by forests of American larch and black spruce. Native Americans became less nomadic and gradually established permanent settlements in the upland regions bordering the Meadowlands estuary, rather than the marshy areas. Food and clothing were obtained by hunting, fishing, and gathering. Reeds, clay, and forest provided the basic materials needed to make baskets, mats, nets, pottery, and canoes. Archeologists seem to agree that the Meadowlands was used significantly in the prehistoric period, although scant evidence has been recovered. Although Native Americans farmed and hunted, their low intensity use of the Meadowlands did not significantly alter its appearance or physical condition.

The forested valley of mixed hardwoods was inundated about 1,000 years ago when sea level rose to near present-day levels following the retreat of the last glacier in the Wisconsin age. The Meadowlands was flooded, and the Atlantic white cedar replaced the larch and spruce. The cedar swamps were the prevailing habitat type until deforestation by the Dutch and English colonists through land reclamation projects, fire, lumbering, diking, and ditching.