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Passaic is a city in Passaic County, New Jersey, located on the Passaic River about nine miles north of Newark.

Passaic had a population of 70,537 in the 2020 census, making it New Jersey's 16th-most-populous municipality.

Census QuickFacts reports 21,151 households in Passaic in 2020-2024 survey data, with an average of 3.29 persons per household and an owner-occupied housing rate of just 23.8 percent.

With more than 22,000 people per square mile, Passaic was the fifth-most densely populated municipality in the United States among places with more than 50,000 residents.

The city originated as Acquackanonk, a Dutch settlement on the Passaic River established in 1679 as a fur-trading post, and its name comes from a Lenape word meaning the valley or place where the land splits.

A commercial wharf at the foot of present-day Main Avenue became known as Acquackanonk Landing, and George Washington's army crossed the Acquackanonk Bridge here during the retreat toward the Delaware River crossing in 1776.

Passaic was chartered as a city on April 2, 1873.

Construction of the Dundee Dam and Dundee Canal around 1850 turned Passaic into a major textile and metalworking center, and its population exploded from 6,532 in 1880 to 54,773 in 1910.

The Botany Worsted Mills, established in 1889, became one of the largest woolen mills in the United States, drawing thousands of Eastern European immigrants, especially Hungarians, Slovaks and Poles, to work in the mills.

Passaic was the scene of the famous 1926 textile strike over wage cuts and the right of free assembly, though its last woolen mill ceased operation around 1955.