Bayonne ( )Wright, E. Assata. "Secaucus: How do you pronounce it? Development put town on map, but newcomers don't know where they are" , The Hudson Reporter, July 6, 2011. Accessed November 30, 2022. "Therefore, the new neighbors may proudly totter about telling folks they live in Sih-KAW-cus or See-KAW-cus. However, natives prefer that the accent be on the first syllable, as in: SEE-kaw-cus.... Bayonne is bay-OWN, not ba-YON, locals say."Lefferts, Walter. Our Own United States , p. 333. J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1925. Accessed November 15, 2020. "Bayonne. Bay-own'"Holt, Alfred Hubbard. American Place Names , p. 26. Gale, 1969. Accessed November 15, 2020. "Bayonne, N . J . 'Bay - own.' Long a, long o; slightly more accent on the 'own'." is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey, in the Gateway Region on Bergen Neck, a peninsula between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill Van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east. At the 2020 United States census, it was the state's 15th-most-populous municipality, surpassing Passaic,Table1. New Jersey Counties and Most Populous Cities and Townships: 2020 and 2010 Censuses , New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Accessed December 1, 2022. with a population of 71,686, an increase of 8,662 (+13.7%) from the 2010 census count of 63,024, which in turn reflected an increase of 1,182 (+1.9%) from the 61,842 counted in the 2000 census.Table 7. Population for the Counties and Municipalities in New Jersey: 1990, 2000 and 2010 , New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, February 2011. Accessed May 1, 2023. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated a population of 74,532 for 2024, making it the 517th-most populous municipality in the nation.Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places of 20,000 or More, Ranked by July 1, 2024 Population: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2024, United States Census Bureau, released May 2025. Accessed May 19, 2024. Note that townships (including Edison, Lakewood and Woodbridge, all of which have larger populations) are excluded from these rankings.
Bayonne was formed as a township in 1861, from portions of Bergen Township, and reincorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature in 1869.Charter of City of Bayonne , Bayonne Historical Society. Accessed November 28, 2011.Snyder, John P. The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606-1968, Bureau of Geology and Topography; Trenton, New Jersey; 1969. p. 146. Accessed May 1, 2026. At the time it was formed, Bayonne included the communities of Bergen Point, Constable Hook, Centreville, Pamrapo and Saltersville.
While somewhat diminished, traditional manufacturing, distribution, and maritime activities remain a driving force of the economy of the city. A portion of the Port of New York and New Jersey is located in the city at Port Jersey, as is the Cape Liberty Cruise Port.
History Originally inhabited by a collection of Native American tribes known as the Lenape, the region presently known as Bayonne was known as Lenapehoking. It was claimed by the Netherlands after Henry Hudson explored the North River, later named after him, on behalf of the Dutch East India Company in 1609. By 1621, the Dutch West India Company was organized to manage the new territory and in June 1623, New Netherland became a Dutch province, with headquarters across New York Harbor in New Amsterdam. In 1646, Director-General of New Netherland Willem Kieft, granted land to Jacob Jacobsen Roy, the chief gunner or constable at Fort Amsterdam. The land become known as "Constable Hook" (Konstapel's Hoeck in Dutch), after his title. Roy, however, never settled or farmed on the land.Joan F. Doherty, Hudson County The Left Bank, (Windsor Publications, Inc., 1986) On January 10, 1658, Peter Stuyvesant, the new Director-General, "re-purchased" the scattered communities of farmsteads of Communipaw, Harsimus, Paulus Hook, Hoebuck, Awiehaken, Pamrapo, and other lands "behind Kill van Kull" from the Lenape. The village of Bergen (predecessor to Jersey City) was established in 1660 and officially chartered by Stuyvesant on September 5, 1661 as what would be the state's first local civil government. The charter partially removed Bergen from the jurisdiction of New Amsterdam and put the surrounding settlements under its authority. The Bayonne area, which included Pamrapo and Constable Hook, became known as "Bergen Neck".Griffin, Molly. "Bayonne Historical Society learns about the Lenape" , NJ Advance Media for NJ.com, February 12, 2009, updated February 12, 2019. Accessed November 12, 2019. "Dr. Oeistreicher is a leading authority on the Lenape Indians, a tribe Hudson encountered when he explored what is now known as the Hudson River."
On August 27, 1664, four English frigates sailed into New York Harbor and captured Fort Amsterdam, and by extension, all of New Netherland, a prelude to the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and renamed it New York. Later in 1664, the Duke of York (later James II), granted the land between the Hudson River and Delaware River to Sir George Carteret in recognition of his loyalty to the Crown through the English Civil War. Carteret named the land New Jersey after his homeland, the Channel Island of Jersey.
In 1776 ahead of the American Revolutionary War, General George Washington ordered American patriots to construct several forts to defend the western banks of the Hudson River and New York Harbor, one of which was Bergen Neck Fort near Pamrapo. It was constructed in July 1776 and later abandoned by patriot forces on October 5, 1776. It was taken over and occupied by Loyalists in 1777 who renamed it Fort Delancey in honor of prominent Loyalist Oliver De Lancey. The fort was occupied by Loyalists for most of the war until they abandoned and burned it in 1782. A historic sign marks the location of the fort at Avenue B between 51st and 52nd Streets.
In 1836, the Morris Canal was extended from Newark linking Bergen Neck with the interior of Northern New Jersey and the Delaware River. Steamboats linked the peninsula with New York City as early as 1846. The Central Railroad of New Jersey linked Bayonne to the west with the opening of the Newark Bay Railroad Bridge and to Manhattan via ferry with the opening of Communipaw Terminal at Jersey City in 1864.
On February 22, 1840, Bergen Neck became part of the newly created Hudson County which separated from Bergen County and annexed the former Essex County land of New Barbadoes Neck. In 1861, residents living between the Morris Canal and the Kill Van Kull organized to create Bayonne as a separate township from portions of Bergen Township, which was later reincorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 10, 1869. The creation of Bayonne united the villages of Bergen Point, Constable Hook, Centreville, Pamrapo and Saltersville. The city's first mayor was Henry Meigs, Jr. (1869–1879) who was also President of the New York Stock Exchange from 1877 to 1878.
According to Royden Page Whitcomb's 1904 book, First History of Bayonne, New Jersey, the name Bayonne is speculated to have originated with Bayonne, France, from which Huguenots settled for a year before the founding of New Amsterdam.Hutchinson, Viola L. The Origin of New Jersey Place Names , New Jersey Public Library Commission, May 1945. Accessed August 27, 2015. However, there is no empirical evidence for this notion. Whitcomb gives more credence to the idea that Erastus Randall, E.C. Bramhall and B.F. Woolsey, who bought the land owned by Jasper and William Cadmus for real estate speculation, named it Bayonne for purposes of real estate speculation, because it was located on the shores of two bays, Newark and New York.Whitcomb, Royden Page. First history of Bayonne, New Jersey, R.P. Whitcomb, Bayonne, New Jersey, 1904, Page 61, Google Books. Accessed November 20, 2010. Furthermore, "Bayonne Avenue", now 33rd Street, was a cross-town street that ran from Newark Bay to New York Bay and is officially recognized as the inspiration for city's name.
Soon after the Civil War, the idea arose of uniting all of the towns of Hudson County east of the Hackensack River into one municipality. In 1868, a bill for submitting the question of consolidation of all of Hudson County to the voters was presented to the Board of Chosen Freeholders (now known as the Board of County Commissioners). The bill was approved by the state legislature on April 2, 1869, with a special election to be held on October 5, 1869. An element of the bill provide that only contiguous towns could be consolidated. Bayonne voted to stay independent with 71.43% of residents voting against the bill.Staff. "Consolidation in New Jersey; A Proposition to Consolidate Jersey City, Hoboken, Hudson City, Bergen, &c., into One City", The New York Times, August 14, 1869. Accessed May 16, 2025. The Morris Canal became the northern most boundary or the "city line" separating Bayonne and what is now Jersey City.
In the mid-nineteenth century, wealthy New Yorkers and Americans, including presidents and authors, came to Bayonne to stay at its hotels and enjoy its brief status as an early beach resort. It was also an early boat building and yachting center where its fishers and oystermen supplied the regional market. As Bayonne began to urbanize and industrialize in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it became home to thousands of European immigrants landing at Ellis Island in New York Harbor. In 1888, Bayonne Medical Center opened in response to the city's growth.
Bayonne became one of the largest centers in the nation for refining crude oil and Standard Oil of New Jersey's facility—which had grown from its original establishment in 1877—and its 6,000 employees made it the city's largest employer. Significant civil unrest arose during the Bayonne refinery strikes of 1915–1916, in which mostly Polish-American workers staged labor actions against Standard Oil of New Jersey and the Tide Water Oil Company, seeking improved pay and working conditions.Dorsey, George. "The Bayonne Refinery Strikes of 1915-1916" , Polish American Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Autumn, 1976), pp. 19-30, Polish American Historical Association. Accessed June 13, 2012. Four striking workers were killed when strikebreakers, allegedly protected by police, fired upon a violent crowd.Brenner, Aaron; Day, Benjamin; and Ness, Emmanuel. The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History , M. E. Sharpe, 2009. . Accessed June 13, 2012.