Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Highlands, NJ

Highlands is a borough in northern Monmouth County, New Jersey, a historic waterfront community on Raritan Bay that serves as a commuter town for New York City; it is the Monmouth County borough, unrelated to New Jersey's northwestern Highlands region.

The borough takes its name from the high bluff on its eastern side that overlooks Sandy Hook, Sandy Hook Bay, the entrance to New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean.

Highlands was incorporated as a borough on March 22, 1900, from parts of Middletown Township, with additional land annexed from the township in 1914.

The 2020 United States census counted 4,621 people in Highlands, down 7.7 percent from 5,005 in 2010, a decline that followed the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.

The 2020 census counted 2,425 households in Highlands, where nearly 45 percent of households consisted of people living alone.

Although the borough covers 1.39 square miles, about 46.5 percent of that area is water, making Highlands one of the most densely settled small boroughs on the Bayshore.

Atop the bluff stand the Navesink Twin Lights, first built in 1828 and rebuilt in 1862; the station installed the first Fresnel lenses used in the United States in 1841 and in 1898 became the first lighthouse in the country with its own source of electricity, then the most powerful lights in the nation.

In 1899, Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated his wireless telegraph at the Twin Lights so the New York Herald could report the America's Cup yacht races, and the northern tower later hosted some of the first experiments with radar in the United States.

English settler Richard Hartshorne purchased a 2,320-acre tract from Native Americans in 1677 covering nearly all of Sandy Hook and Highlands, then called Portland Poynt, and became the area's first permanent settler.

Revolutionary War militia captain Joshua Huddy was hanged by Loyalists at Gravelly Point in Highlands in 1782 after writing his will, and a monument in Huddy Park honors him today.