Milltown: Rubber Capital of the Raritan

Milltown, New Jersey, sits along Lawrence Brook, a tributary of the Raritan River, and the name tells the whole story: grist mills and saw mills powered by those waters drew settlers here as far back as the seventeen hundreds. The borough incorporated formally in eighteen eighty-nine. Its twentieth-century identity came from rubber.

The Michelin Tire Company had a major plant here by the First World War, making Milltown one of the few American towns where French industrial investment shaped the entire economy. At its peak the factory employed thousands and Milltown grew around it. When Michelin eventually consolidated operations elsewhere, the borough had to reinvent itself.

Today it is a quiet residential community of about seven thousand, with the old mill pond and riverside greenway as its most visible legacy.