Rooter Master

About Rahway

Rahway () is a city in southern Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. A bedroom community of New York City, it is centrally located in the Rahway Valley region, in the New York metropolitan area. The city is 15 miles (24 km) southwest of Manhattan and 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Staten Island. Built on the navigable Rahway River, it was an industrial and artisanal craft city for much of its history. The city has increasingly reinvented itself in recent years as a diverse regional hub for the arts and biological sciences, with a new global headquarters for Merck & Co. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 29,556, its highest decennial count ever and an increase of 2,210 (+8.1%) from the 27,346 recorded at the 2010 census, which in turn reflected an increase of 846 (+3.2%) from the 26,500 counted in the 2000 census. == History == === Indigenous presence === Rahway and the surrounding area were once the home of the Lenape Native Americans, and tradition states that the city was named after Rahwack (or Ra-wa-rah), a local tribal chief. === English colonization === Formal European colonization began in 1664 with the purchase by the English from the Lenape of the Elizabethtown Tract, which encompassed lands from the mouth of the Raritan River and included all of present-day Union County as well as parts of Somerset, Middlesex, Morris and Essex counties. The early settlers of Elizabethtown and Woodbridge were the founders of Rahway which began as outlying acreage and plantations. The Seventeenth Century Clark House is one of the oldest buildings in the state.By the 18th century, Rahway consisted of four distinct communities: Upper Rahway, Bridge Town (or Lower Rahway), Leesville, and Milton.