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In October 2006, President Bush signed legislation designating the Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area in New Jersey. This journey toward recognition by the Federal Government of our state’s significant role in the American Revolution began in 2000 when Congress directed the National Park Service to determine whether remaining resources related to the American Revolution in central New Jersey were of national significance.

The study area comprised 14 counties between Bergen and Passaic in the north and Camden and Gloucester in the south. This area includes Morristown National Historical Park, Princeton and Monmouth Battlefield State Parks, Washington’s Crossing State Park, New Bridge Landing, the Old Barracks in Trenton, 13 National Historic Landmarks and more than 250 other National Register of Historic Places sites and districts. All these sites have significant Revolutionary War period resources and that has secured their protection.

A series of public meetings to introduce the study and solicit comment took place in 2001 and 2002. In late 2002, the Secretary of the Interior certified to Congress that the Crossroads of the American Revolution met all National Park Service criteria as a National Heritage Area.

Unlike a national park, which is owned and managed by the National Park Service in its entirety, a national heritage area (NHA) offers a framework for partnerships and collaboration within a region of thematically related, locally managed sites. Federal funding of a management group (up to $1 million a year for 10 years) is intended as the catalyst to attract state and local funding and substantial corporate and private foundation support.

No two National Heritage Areas are alike, but New Jersey’s has established an over-arching mission to be carried out by the managing organization, the Crossroads of the American Revolution Association: to foster the conservation, preservation and interpretation of New Jersey’s Revolutionary War sites and landscapes in ways that enhance public understanding about the people, places and events that transformed the course of American and New Jersey history.

Ultimately, the goals of the Crossroads Assocation will be to raise popular understanding of the historical significance of these sites, to provide an area-wide network between established historic sites, state parks, private property owners, local governments, not-for-profits, and other civic organizations in order to facilitate further preservation (including open-space preservation) and to offer a forum for new initiatives on site use, management, education and historical interpretation.