Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Cresskill Cresskill, NJ

Cresskill is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City resting on land originally inhabited by the Munsee-Delaware.

Cresskill takes its name from the watercress, or "cress," that grew in its streams, combined with "kill," the old Dutch-derived word for the stream passing through the area.

Cresskill was incorporated as a borough on May 8, 1894, from portions of Palisades Township during the "Boroughitis" wave that created 26 Bergen County boroughs that year, and a portion of the borough was annexed by Alpine in 1904.

Railroad access transformed Cresskill's farms into businesses shipping to New York City, and by 1897 a chicken hatchery in the borough had become the world's largest.

During World War I, Camp Merritt, a roughly 770-acre embarkation camp spanning Cresskill and its neighboring boroughs, served as the debarkation point for more than a million American troops sent overseas.

The Camp Merritt Memorial, a large obelisk that locals call simply "The Monument" or "The Circle Monument," was dedicated in 1924 at the traffic circle where Madison Avenue meets Knickerbocker Road to honor the soldiers who passed through the camp.

The 2020 census counted 9,155 people in Cresskill, living in 3,015 households, an increase from 8,573 in 2010.

Cresskill has a notably large Korean American community, which accounted for 17.8% of the borough's population in the 2010 census, while Asian residents overall made up 31.3% of the population in 2020.

Four Cresskill houses are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the Blackledge-Gair House, the Demarest-Atwood House, the Peter Huyler House and the Benjamin P. Westervelt House.

Cresskill Middle School and Cresskill High School share a combined campus serving the borough's students from sixth through twelfth grade.