New Jersey Roads - Morris/Passaic CR 694

Morris/Passaic , Paterson-Hamburg Turnpike

Back in the day, NJ 23 was a two-lane highway from the top of the state all the way to Newark. Just because it was truncated to Verona and Bloomfield Ave. extended eastward doesn't stop the old parts of the southern highway from being known as the Newark-Pompton Turnpike (now mostly, at least from a roadgeek perspective, (CR 504 - all of the good old signs are on the 504 section). I say southern highway because the Newark-Pompton Turnpike ended in, well, Pompton. Luckily, running through Pompton from the east is the Paterson-Hamburg Turnpike, and old NJ 23 followed that northward to, well, Hamburg. Much of the old Turnpike exists in small pieces as Old Route 23, and the rest is covered by current 23. The roads diverge for good in Passaic County near Butler, and that's where this page comes in. The shield above is in Morris County, but most of the Turnpike is in Passaic County, and one of the two connecting Morris County segments doesn't even have a county route number. So call the county name omission playing it safe.


As soon as you leave NJ 23, you get High. High Crest Drive is a development that ties into 23 NB (among other streets), and thus the easiest access from 23 SB is to allow left turns onto the NB onramp.

Old bridge inventory sign...


...from this bridge. All of the original State Highway Route 8 became NJ 23 in the First Renumbering, except from Sussex on it became NJ 84, now NJ 284. Obviously, this bridge was state maintained until the NJ 23 arterial alignment was built to the south to bypass Butler, and obviously now it's county maintained. Passaic CR 694 begins here, and Passaic and Morris run 694 along the Paterson-Hamburg Turnpike for awhile (among other numbers like 511 and Alt. 511).


As I said, the Turnpike crosses into Morris County for a little while (actually for two little whiles), and Passaic County leaves you this sign from back when Massachusetts was also using white cut-corner signs (as in, my parents weren't born yet). This is the only county line sign I've ever seen; most list distances to other towns beneath the town you're in (Bloomingdale in this case). The first stretch in Morris County is just a town road, but this time it becomes CR 694 (carrying the number from Passaic). That means the first bit of Passaic CR 694 fresh off NJ 23 is isolated from the rest.


Here's the counterpart in the other direction, in the same spot.


You could convince me that these white arrows date from when I-287 was only open between NJ 23 (Exit 52) and here (Exit 53). In that case, one would use the very short stretch of freeway (the rest was under construction) to get to NJ 23 North (so the North banner was probably moved over), and I guess one would have had to make a right on the Newark-Pompton Turnpike to get to NJ 23 South. The alternative is that these are just errors, but that's less romantic.


Ramps at every interchange get lettered in New Jersey (most aren't signed, though), and in this case they're based on the intersecting route to the freeway, not the route the ramp branches from. This is the I-287 SB offramp.

Onto I-287
To current NJ 23
Into Passaic County
Into Morris County
Back to NJ Roads
Back to Roads