New Jersey Fast Facts

Did you know that New Jersey has a state insect? It’s the Honeybee. Did you know NJ has a state fish? Or that the first organized baseball game was held in Hoboken in 1846, and Rutgers hosted Princeton at the first intercollegiate football match in 1869? It’s true!

Here is some more interesting information about our state:

New Jersey was the third colony to become a state, on December 18, 1787. The total area is 215 square miles, which makes it 46th among all the states. The highest point in the state is at High Point State Park, in Sussex County, and it is 1,803 feet.

Within these boundaries are some interesting firsts. The first organized baseball game was held in Hoboken in 1846 and Rutgers hosted Princeton at the first intercollegiate football match in 1869. Basketball is in there too, with the first professional game played in Trenton in 1896. The first drive-in movie theater opened in 1933 outside of Camden. The first dinosaur skeleton discovered in North America was found in Haddonfield, New Jersey in 1858.

In 1877, two years before the light bulb, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph (record player) and followed up with motion pictures in 1889, all in his Menlo Park laboratory. Perhaps of equal significance to the music industry, Les Paul of Mahwah, introduced the solid body electric guitar in 1940. New Jersey is a leading industrial state and is the largest chemical producing state in the nation. About one-sixth of all drugs manufactured in the United States come from New Jersey.

The state seashell is the knobbed whelk, (Busycon carica gmelin) because it is found on all beaches and bays of New Jersey. The eastern goldfinch was adopted as the New Jersey state bird in 1935. The state animal became the horse (Equus caballus) in 1977. With more than 1,400 miles of trout streams, it's only natural that the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) became the state's official fish in 1992. In 1974 the state adopted the Honeybee as the state insect.

The state flower of New Jersey was originally the violet (Viola sororia), in 1913. By 1971, New Jersey's Garden Clubs helped make the common meadow violet the state flower. The Red Oak (Quercus borealis maxima) was named the official state tree in 1950. We also named the dogwood as the state memorial tree in 1951.

In 1991, the Hadrosaurus Foulkii became the state dinosaur because it was the world's first complete dinosaur skeleton ever discovered. This historic find in 1858 in Haddonfield, New Jersey, was the scientific evidence needed to prove that dinosaurs really did exist. Since then, other bones have been found in New Jersey, providing even more bona-fide proof.

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Author: C. Cohen