When Kevin Eberle and Genna Cargill began exploring the river towns and farmlands of Hunterdon County, NJ, seven years ago in search of a more rural lifestyle, they often passed a small, historic community with a single blinking traffic light.
“Every time we looked around, we’d end up with this flashing red light and be like, ‘We’re moving here,'” says Mr. Eberle, 37, owner of a digital marketing company.
This prophecy proved correct – twice. In 2015, the couple bought a 1790, two-bedroom farmhouse eight houses east of that twinkling light, paying $300,000. They married the following year, and in 2020 they traded eight houses west of the light for a three-bedroom Victorian house, paying $490,000.
The only traffic light in Delaware Township, a 37-square-mile area bordering Pennsylvania across the Delaware River in the Amwell Valley, is at the intersection of Routes 604 and 523 in the unincorporated community of Sergeantsville. It is within walking distance to the one room Post Office, City Hall, the Sergeantsville General Store and the 19th Century Sergeantsville Inn where locals gather on Friday nights.
On one of those Friday nights a few years ago, at the Inn’s tavern, Ms. Cargill and Mr. Eberle met the former owners of their present home. When the house came on the market a year later, they reached out to the two women and asked for a tour. Within days they were under contract.
“It’s a small area and everyone knows everyone,” said Mr. Eberle, who built his business by serving companies in the region. “Life is much slower here. There is no traffic unless you get stuck behind a tractor. You don’t feel like you’re in New Jersey.”
Aside from a few historic villages and adjacent residential communities, most of the Delaware community is made up of farmland, rolling hills, and forests. Through restrictive zoning, environmental protection, and a special open spaces fund, nearly 40 percent of the city’s land mass has been preserved, said Rosalind Westlake, chair of the community planning committee and open spaces committee.
“It’s a culture in this area,” said Ms. Westlake, who moved to Delaware in 2004 from Princeton, NJ. “Everyone is for preservation. Farmers want it to keep the city’s agricultural legacy alive, and New York transplants want it because it’s spectacular.”
This commitment to land protection was tested when the PennEast Pipeline Company attempted to build a 116-mile natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to New Jersey that would have seized state and private land through significant territory and bisected the heart of Delaware Township. Working with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, community residents conducted a seven-year campaign to block the $1 billion project. They emerged victorious last September when the consortium of energy companies withdrew the proposal.
The protracted struggle may have temporarily dampened Delaware Township’s appeal to potential buyers, said Jacqueline Evans, an artist and real estate agent at Kurfiss Sotheby’s International Realty. “The pipeline has been a constant problem and because there was so much insecurity it could have devastated this city,” said Ms Evans, 57, who has lived there for 22 years and has spoken out against the pipeline. “There was so much resistance here, so we formed an organization to fight it. And we won.”
What you will find
Delaware Township, with fewer than 5,000 residents, has eight designated historic districts, including Sergeantsville, Rosemont, and Locktown, where the more concentrated residential areas are located. In much of the rest of the township, zoning and environmental restrictions require minimum building lots of three to seven acres. There are also several large farms, some occupying hundreds of acres. More than 60 percent of the community’s area is farmland that is assessed and more than 50 percent is actively farmed, Ms. Westlake said.
Farm owners include wealthy New Yorkers who lease their fields to working farmers, as well as gardeners like Peter McCrohan, owner of the Shoppons Run flower farm. A Princeton native, Mr. McCrohan brought his farming skills to Arizona for eight years, until the land there became too dry to grow much, he said, sending him back east. His dahlias, lilies and peonies now grace the tables of local restaurants and weddings, and can be plucked by customers who drop by.
“I found these 14 acres of sandy loam with all these overgrown outbuildings. It didn’t look like it does today, but it was perfect — and it was like they gave the house for free,” said Mr. McCrohan, 71, of the 1879 farm and farmhouse that he bought in 2010 for $525,000. “It felt like coming home.”
Delaware Township is also home to a number of artists due to its proximity to popular Delaware River towns such as Lambertville, NJ and New Hope, Pennsylvania. Long rows of converted chicken coops at Cane Farm Furniture in Rosemont serve as studio and retail spaces for artisans. Other makers have workshops in their homes: Geoff and Karen Caldwell run the Sunflower Glass Studio in a former tool shop next door to the 1870s farmhouse they bought 44 years ago.
“Some very famous artists have lived along the river,” said Ms Caldwell, 69. “I think artists attract artists.”
What you pay
As of mid-October, 18 homes were on the market in Delaware Township. The most expensive was a 92-acre horse ranch with a three-bedroom 1880 farmhouse and several outbuildings, listed for $3.2 million. The cheapest was an 1896 two-bedroom stone house on 0.14 acres that was listed for $425,000.
According to the Garden State Multiple Listing Service, the average selling price for the 29 homes sold in the first nine months of this year was $797,445, a sizeable jump from the average of $651,061 for the 39 homes that sold were sold in the same period in 2021.
The atmosphere
Next to the Tavern at the Inn, Sergeantsville’s Grain & Feed, the place where locals buy supplies for their cattle and catch up on gossip, is the town’s most popular meeting place.
“There’s a real closeness here, everyone takes care of each other,” said Paula Anastasio, a real estate agent and 38-year-old resident, who posted on the community’s Facebook page about a recent incident of a stray donkey wandering through a pasture. Within minutes, the donkey was identified as Ricky from “the great white house,” who was searching for his companion Lucy, who died in May.
Charity events sponsored by the Delaware Township Historical Society have a similar small-town vibe: the group’s president, Roger Byrom, holds candlelit dinners at his 18th-century sheep station and cooks over the open fire in his basement kitchen.
This year, over Thanksgiving weekend, 22 artists will share their work and workspaces during the 28th Annual City Studio Tour. And for nature lovers, there’s the 79-acre Bull’s Island Recreation Area, with hiking and biking trails along the Delaware and Raritan Canals and well-stocked fishing spots.
The schools
Delaware Township School serves 361 students from preschool through eighth grade on its 26-acre campus with a state-of-the-art applied technology laboratory and an active parenting program. Residents will vote on a referendum in November on $1.35 million in bonds to rebuild the school’s roof.
High school students attend Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, NJ. It serves 2,566 students from four neighboring communities and is spread over 72 acres with four gymnasiums, two theaters, a soccer field, and its own television and radio stations. The school offers 76 Advanced Placement and Honors classes, 26 of which are college credit earners. In 2021, the average SAT scores were 593 in literacy and 596 in math, compared to the state averages of 557 and 560.
Private schools in the area include Pennington School, a mixed day and boarding school for sixth through twelfth graders; the Hun School of Princeton, a middle and high school; and the Lawrenceville School, a co-educational boarding school.
The shuttle service
The nearest train stations are at Princeton Junction or Trenton, around 20 minutes’ drive away. New Jersey Transit trains to Penn Station in Manhattan from Princeton Junction take 55 to 85 minutes and cost $16 one way or $451 for a monthly pass. From Trenton, the journey takes between 70 and 95 minutes and costs US$16.75 one way or US$480 per month.
A more time-consuming and expensive option is Lambertville’s Trans-Bridge bus service, which takes almost two hours to get to Manhattan and costs $48.05 each way.
The history
The only remaining historic covered bridge in New Jersey is the Green Sergeant’s Covered Bridge, which crosses Wickecheoke Creek. Built in 1872, the single-lane wooden bridge accepted horse-drawn carriages and later cars. But in 1960, after being rammed by too many vehicles, local officials planned to replace it with a modern bridge. Community outcry was intense, so the 84-foot bridge was instead rebuilt using the original materials, with the addition of an uncovered eastbound lane to ease traffic flow.
