06/08/2026
A big birthday is approaching… and it’s not the one you’re thinking about. One year from today, New Milford turns 350 years old! On June 8, 1677, David Demarest Sr., received the French Patent, a deed granting him several thousand acres of land along the Hackensack River. The settlement he established for French Huguenots in present-day New Milford became the first permanent one for people of European heritage in Bergen County.
The first house was built approximately where the Elks Club is located. It was probably a simple log cabin that provided shelter while Demarest and his family quickly built more houses and commercial buildings, including a gristmill, a dam and landings for boats. The Jacobus Demarest House, a stone house on River Road, still exists and is the oldest privately owned and continuously occupied house in New Milford.
Demarest chose this location for a reason: it was the farthest point that large merchant ships could sail upstream on river. He knew this would be ideal spot to transfer goods from ships to ground transportation and vice versa. Because of his vision, this area became a center of commerce.
What he may not have realized was that the infrastructure he built to support trade and commerce would make this area a strategic crossroad during the Revolution. In the first pamphlet of “The American Crisis,” an account of the Retreat of 1776, Thomas Paine wrote: "Our first object was to secure the bridge over the Hackensack, which laid up the river between the enemy and us.”
Happy 349th birthday, New Milford!
