Raritan Bay

Raritan Bay
Raritan Bay is shown as highlighted area south of Lower New York Bay and north of Monmouth County.
Raritan Bay
Coordinates	40°29′00″N 74°10′59″W / 40.48333°N 74.18306°W / 40.48333; -74.18306Coordinates: 40°29′00″N 74°10′59″W / 40.48333°N 74.18306°W / 40.48333; -74.18306
Type	Bay
Etymology	Raritan Indian tribe
Part of	New York Bight
Primary inflows	Primary: Raritan River Shrewsbury River Navesink River Secondary: Hudson River through lower New York Bay Passaic and Hackensack Rivers via Newark Bay and the Arthur Kill
Ocean/sea sources	Atlantic Ocean
Basin countries	United States
Managing agency	Gateway National Recreation Area and National Park Service U.S. Department of Defense New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection New York State Department of Environmental Conservation New York City Monmouth County Park System New York City Department of Environmental Protection and New York City Parks Department
Max. length	9 miles (14 km)
Max. width	12 miles (19 km)
Surface area	69,188 acres (27,999 ha)
Average depth	11–30 feet (3.4–9.1 m)
Max. depth	20 feet (6.1 m)
Residence time	60 tidal cycles
Salinity	12-32 ppt
Shore length1	33,500 acres (13,600 ha)
Surface elevation	0 m (0 ft)
Frozen	Coastal or inner bays
Benches	Perth Amboy Sayreville Keyport Keansburg Sandy Hook Beach (Gateway National Recreation Area) Ward's Point, Staten Island Coney Island
Settlements	New Jersey Perth Amboy South Amboy Sayreville Keyport Keansburg Sandy Hook New York Tottenville, Staten Island New Dorp, Staten Island Rockaway, Queens Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
1 Shore length is not a well-defined measure.

Primary:

Secondary:

New Jersey

New York

Raritan Bay is a bay located at the southern portion of Lower New York Bay between the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey and is part of the New York Bight. The bay is bounded on the northwest by New York's Staten Island, on the west by Perth Amboy, New Jersey, on the south by the Raritan Bayshore communities of Monmouth County, New Jersey, and on the east by Sandy Hook Bay. The bay is named after the Raritans, a branch of the Lenape tribe who lived in the vicinity of the bay for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Dutch colonists in the 17th century.

Archeological evidence suggests that humans were already in the region at the close of the . The early "Big Game Hunters" vanished, but the coastal regions were resettled by peoples accustomed to village-style living ("tidewater communities") that subsisted on hunting and gathering marine shellfish, and eventually, on agriculture. In pre-Columbian times "woodlands cultures" probably centered in the Ohio Valley became the dominant cultural influence in the region. Large shell middens were found around Raritan Bay and on Staten Island, a testament of the utilization of the bay for food by Algonquin Indian tribes (Lenapes) who occupied the area when early Colonialists arrived. Unfortunately, early settlers used these shell piles for road construction and field fertilizer. Tottenville was once well known for its roads paved with oyster shells.

The Raritan River was perhaps the major drainage channel along the ice front throughout the Wisconsin glaciation (Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4). Prior to that time the region drained southward across the saddle between the Atlantic Highlands and the Newark Basin into the Delaware River Valley. This saddle area is a very broad flood plain that preserves river terrace gravels (Pensauken Formation) from the Sangemon Interglacial State (Stage 5), as well as older Pleistocene fluvial deposits (The Bridgetown Formation). During the lowstand in sea level caused by the Wisconsin glacier, the Raritan River carved back into its headlands and captured the major drainages from the Newark Basin.