Did you know that...?

Most newspaper articles about the Borough emphasize budget, politics, the arts, or our children and the public school. Did you know these other historical and environmental facts about the 1.96 square miles of the Borough of Roosevelt?

• The Borough of Roosevelt is the only municipality in New Jersey that is, in its entirety, a registered National Historic Site. Open space (farmland and greenbelts) was a design component of the original Homesteads community and is specifically listed in our registration as a National Historic Site.
  
• The farmlands and wet stream corridors of Roosevelt were an integral part of the Borough’s design and, consequently, comprise a fundamental element of the historic significance of the Borough.
  
• Ten of Monmouth county’s 21 recognized rare, threatened or endangered vertebrates have been reported from the area in and near Roosevelt. Even so, the Borough is in an “underexplored area” according to scientists at New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP).
  
• Roosevelt includes one or more populations of the Wood Turtle (threatened in New Jersey). It is not only known from wetlands, but travels overland for considerable distances—during May and June in particular.
  
• The Cooper’s Hawk (endangered in New Jersey) has a confirmed breeding site over the south boundary of the Borough.
  
• The Bog Turtle (endangered in New Jersey) has been found to have significant populations both to the north and south of the Borough. The Borough includes considerable habitat appropriate to this species.
  
• Borough streams have recently been host to freshwater mussels including the large species called the Eastern Floater. [A number of children in town collect shells from Empty Box Brook, and recently deposited muskrat middens of mussel shells can be found around Rising Sun Lake. Since mussel species are infrequently alone in such streams, a search for other species might be successful if the Eastern Floater is still present.]
  
• Bird species reported to migrate through, or hunt in or near, the Borough have come here because of farmland and wetland forest. Such species include the Upland Sandpiper, the Vesper Sparrow, the Grasshopper Sparrow, the Barred Owl, the Long-eared Owl, the Pied-Billed Grebe, the Savannah Sparrow, and the Red-headed Woodpecker.
  
• Rare, threatened, or endangered plant species are also present in our exceptional value wetlands. Most recently (2 April 2000), members of the Fund for Roosevelt, Inc. found our town's first station of the Blunt-lobed Grape Fern (Botrychium oneidense), a species threatened in New Jersey.
  
• Roosevelt includes, but only partially protects, a significant hardwoods wetland, one of the state’s threatened ecosystems.
  
• Roosevelt overlaps headwaters of both the Assunpink and Stony Brook-Millstone watersheds. They are divided by a slight ridge running across the northern 500 acres of the Borough.
  
• The wetlands in the northeastern corner of the Borough surround Rocky Brook, a tributary of the Millstone River. This area of Roosevelt and the adjacent portions of Millstone Township are recommended for municipal acquisition and preservation by the Monmouth County Parks Depart-ment.
  
• Roosevelt’s wetlands along Empty Box Brook are expanding and becoming wetter probably due to the sealing of sewer lines that were formerly extremely leaky and served to partially drain wetlands. Siltation from soil conservation errors on an upstream farm may also be contributing.
  
• Charles P. Steinmetz (1856-1923), depicted crossing the symbolic bridge to the new world in Roosevelt's Shahn mural was named one of the ten greatest engineers of the 20th Century by vote of the 89,000 members of the engineering honor society, Tau Beta Pi. Steinmetz is credited not only with important inventions addressing electric power generation, but with laying the groundwork for the transistor, television, the integrated circuit, and communications satellites, according to the Union College Magazine (Summer, 2000) which reported the results of the voting.

For more interesting facts about the town go to the Natural, Historic, and Social Resources page or return to the Fund's home page.