Secaucus, New Jersey

• 1. Introduction

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  Secaucus, New Jersey sits just across the Hudson from Manhattan, yet for most of the 20th century its name meant one thing to anyone downwind: pigs. At the height of World War II, roughly 250,000 pigs lived in the town, outnumbering the human residents sixteen to one. That single statistic opens the door to a much stranger story than most commuters racing through Secaucus Junction ever suspect.

  How did a place derived from an Algonquian word for "snake" or "place of snakes" become one of the most odorous addresses in the New York metropolitan area? How did it shed that identity and reinvent itself as a suburb, a retail destination, and ultimately the official review center for the entire NBA? And what happened to the debris from Pennsylvania Station, unceremoniously dumped in the Secaucus Meadowlands in 1963? Those questions are what this story is about.

• 2. From Snakes to Swine

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  Peter Stuyvesant, then Director-General of New Netherland, purchased the territory known as Sikakes in 1658. It was, at the time, an island. The land passed through colonial hands and was first chartered in 1660 as Bergen, making it part of what is considered the oldest municipality in New Jersey. By 1683 it had become Bergen Township.

  Settlement by the Smith family had begun by at least 1733, and their presence left a lasting mark in the Abel I. Smith Burial Ground, which remains part of local lore. Secaucus was formally organized as a borough on the 12th of March 1900, carved from portions of North Bergen. On the 7th of June 1917, following a referendum held two days earlier, it was reincorporated as a town.

  The town's early economy centered on flowers. That agricultural identity gave way to pig farming in the first half of the 20th century, and by the early 1900s approximately 55 pig farms operated within the town's borders. The farms fed the meat demands of Newark and New York, and the farmers grew wealthy. Many of them entered local politics, and the most colorful among them was Henry B. Krajewski, a pork peddler who ran for New Jersey senator, three times for governor, and twice for U.S. President.

• 3. The End of the Farms

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  An ordinance passed in 1947 prohibited the establishment of any new farms, signaling that the pig era was entering its final chapter. The farms did not disappear quietly. Through the 1950s they dwindled, partly because eleven of them were acquired for construction of the New Jersey Turnpike. State planners were wary of tourists encountering the smell, and the remaining operations were shut down by court order in the late 1950s.

  The town's rendering plants and junk yards had reinforced a reputation for odor that clung to the Secaucus name long after the last pig was gone. In 1963, debris from the demolition of the original Pennsylvania Station was dumped in the Secaucus Meadowlands, including a set of statues that had been tossed away without ceremony. That moment fixed Secaucus in a particular kind of metropolitan imagination: a place where New York sent its discards.

  In a non-binding referendum held in 1969, fully 90% of Secaucus voters chose to leave Hudson County and join Bergen County, citing the latter's more suburban character and lower taxes. The state never acted on the result. Only the state legislature has authority to move county lines, and the matter went nowhere. Secaucus remained, formally, in Hudson County.

• 4. A Town Built on Transit

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  Frank R. Lautenberg Secaucus Junction opened in December 2003, bringing with it a 1,100-spot parking lot designed for commuters. The station connects NJ Transit's two commuter rail networks in northern New Jersey and functions as the agency's central rail hub. Exit 15X on the New Jersey Turnpike was built specifically to serve it.

  The 9th of February 1996 stands as the darkest date in NJ Transit history. Two commuter trains collided at Bergen Junction in Secaucus when a train on the Bergen Line ran a signal and struck a train on the Main Line. The accident happened during the morning rush hour, just south of where the current Secaucus Junction station now stands. Three people died, making it NJ Transit's deadliest accident and the first to cause fatalities among passengers and crew.

  The town's transit reach extends beyond rail. Numerous NJ Transit bus routes connect Secaucus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan, to Newark, Jersey City, and Hoboken. Megabus offers curbside intercity service outside the Junction station, with direct routes to Boston and Philadelphia. In an earlier era, the Jersey City, Hoboken and Rutherford Electric Railway ran a trolley line through the main business district along Paterson Plank Road.

• 5. Meadowlands and Green Space

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  Snake Hill, officially known as Laurel Hill, rises roughly 150 feet from the flat Meadowlands near the New Jersey Turnpike. It is an igneous rock diabase intrusion, a geological oddity jutting out of wetlands at the southern end of town.

  Secaucus holds the most open green space of any town in Hudson County, at 27.4%. The Hackensack River runs along the western edge of town, while Penhorn Creek and Cromakill Creek mark its eastern borders. The town is, in geographical terms, still an island.

  Schmidt's Woods, near Secaucus High School in the North End, is one of the last original hardwood forests remaining in urban North Jersey. Mill Creek Marsh is administered by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission and is planned to eventually connect to the Secaucus Greenway. The Harmon Cove neighborhood, developed in the 1970s as a gated community by Hartz Mountain Industries, takes its name from a portmanteau of the company's name and the surrounding landscape. Its western edge borders the Hackensack RiverWalk.

• 6. Sports, Media and Commerce

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  Starting with the 2014-15 NBA season, Secaucus became the official review headquarters of the league. The replay center features over 94 HD televisions, with multiple feeds of every live NBA game running simultaneously. Referees around the country call in for guidance on disputed plays.

  MLB Network, NHL Network, and NBA Entertainment and NBA TV are all headquartered in Secaucus. The NBA draft lottery is held in the NBA TV studios. Red Bull New York also lists the town as its home base. MSNBC launched from Secaucus before NBCUniversal consolidated it with NBC News at 30 Rockefeller Plaza; MLB Network later moved into that space.

  WWOR-TV, channel 9, is licensed to Secaucus and serves as the flagship station of the MyNetworkTV programming service, though its studios have since moved to Manhattan. The talk show The Morton Downey Jr. Show was filmed in Secaucus from 1987 to 1989. The NBC hospital drama Mercy, which ran from 2009 to 2010, was filmed primarily at a warehouse on 10 Enterprise Avenue. The indie rock band The Wrens named their 1996 album Secaucus for the town where the group lived and worked together for a decade.

  On the corporate side, The Children's Place, Hartz Mountain Industries, and Quest Diagnostics maintain headquarters in Secaucus. Panasonic had operated its North American headquarters there since 1973, occupying 250,000 square feet of offices and 500,000 square feet of warehouse space, before announcing in 2011 that it would relocate to Newark, citing an Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit of $102 million from the state.

• 7. A Changing Population

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  The 2020 census counted 22,181 residents in Secaucus, a jump of more than 5,900 people from the 2010 figure of 16,264. That 36.4% increase over a decade is among the more striking demographic shifts in Hudson County.

  The racial composition shifted significantly across two decades. In 2000 the non-Hispanic white population made up just over 70% of the town. By 2020 that share had fallen to under 40%, while the Asian population rose from roughly 12% to over 32% over the same period. The Hispanic or Latino population grew from about 12% in 2000 to over 21% in 2020.

  About 20% of Secaucus's employed residents commute to New York City, according to the 2009-2013 American Community Survey. The median age in 2020 was 37.8 years. Property taxes in 2018 averaged $6,258 per bill, the lowest average in Hudson County and well below the statewide average of $8,767. The Nicholas G. Hayek Watchmaking School, established in 2005, offers a two-year program preparing students to service watches, a reminder that not every institution in this transit-and-retail town is pointed toward Manhattan.