Millbrook Village - An historic site within The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area

Old Mine Road (north of the Delaware Gap) (908) 841-9520

Park rangers and volunteer craftspersons in period costume demonstrate period skills, and several original Millbrook structures are open for visits. School programs and tours can be accommodated as staffing permits.

Open from late June - October, from 9 A.M - 5 P.M.

The village comes alive each year on the first weekend that is fully in the month of October for Millbrook Days, when more than 150 volunteers of the Millbrook Village Society demonstrate crafts and skills of rural living in the young nation. The event is held rain or shine

1832, Abram Garis, a local farmer, built a grain (grist) mill along the newly-built Columbia–Walpack Turnpike where the turnpike crossed a stream known as Van Campens Mill brook. Van Campen’s mill (near the former Depew Recreation Site) was no longer operating by then, and the Garis mill was clearly more convenient for farmers than the nearest mill in Flatbrookville. In time, the stream's name shortened to Van Campens Brook, and the area became known simply as Millbrook.

A Methodist congregation organized and in 1840 built a small church with a school in the basement. That same year, a store opened and a smithy set up shop -- the town was on its way. The next generation benefited from a post office, a boarding house catering to farm workers and serving "spirits," a cider mill for the less spirited, and a much-expanded Methodist church.

By 1875, Millbrook had reached a peak of 75 inhabitants and about 19 major buildings. The village stretched out in a line along both sides of the Columbia–Walpack Turnpike, a popular alternate route for those not taking Old Mine Road. The approach to the town took a visitor through miles of cultivated fields.

From 1880 onward, however, Millbrook suffered the decline of rural villages that was experienced throughout the country. Land values dropped steeply after the Civil War. Industrialization, especially of farming methods, made competition difficult for the independent small farmer, and isolation from railroad transportation made produce from the Millbrook area particularly difficult to market. In addition, the lure of cash wages for factory jobs in the cities was drawing the young away from the villages of their birth.

Garis’ mill closed just after 1900, and by 1950, only the blacksmith was doing business in town. In the 1950s, the Columbia–Walpack Turnpike was realigned to accommodate stream impoundments one mile south at Watergate, and the crossroads at the heart of the village was lost. Auto traffic now bypassed the village, following the paved route of today's Old Mine Road.

By the 1960s, Millbrook had become the quiet home of summer residents and retirees.Millbrook Village has about the same number of buildings that it had around 1900. The roadbed of the old turnpike is now the main "street" running southwest to northeast through the village. Thus, Millbrook Village today does not replicate the appearance of Millbrook in 1832 or in 1900. Rather, it evokes the feeling and folkways of the countryside hamlets where most of this nation's people lived until 1900.