Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Old Tappan, NJ

Old Tappan is a borough in northern Bergen County, New Jersey, bordering the New York hamlets of Pearl River and Tappan in Rockland County across the state line.

Old Tappan was incorporated as a borough on October 18, 1894, from portions of Harrington Township during the "Boroughitis" phenomenon, in which 26 new boroughs were formed in Bergen County in 1894 alone.

The borough's name is derived from the Tappan tribe of Native Americans, a Lenape people who inhabited the area.

The land under Old Tappan was purchased from the Lenape on March 17, 1682, and the Tappan Patent granted legal title on March 24, 1687, to thirteen Dutchmen and three free Black men, a land grant believed to be the only one of its kind in the country to include Black and white grantees on an equal basis.

Old Tappan was governed from New York for nearly a century until a royal boundary settlement in 1769 severed it from Orange County and placed it in the Province of New Jersey, with the change in jurisdiction taking effect in 1773.

The 2020 United States census counted 5,888 residents in Old Tappan, up from 5,750 in the 2010 census, when the borough had 1,931 households.

One of only four confluence points in New Jersey, the crossing of 41 degrees north latitude and 74 degrees west longitude, lies within Old Tappan on reservoir watershed property.

About a fifth of Old Tappan's 4.16 square miles is water, much of it the Lake Tappan reservoir watershed lands along its northern edge.

Old Tappan's youngest students attend T. Baldwin Demarest Elementary School and Charles DeWolf Middle School, both in the borough.

Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan, a Blue Ribbon school whose teams are the Golden Knights, is located in the borough and serves students from Old Tappan, Harrington Park, Northvale and Norwood.