PARK RIDGE, N.J.— “Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. It is the day of the Improvement Association’s picnic. Extensive preparations have been made. There will be games, races, a ball match, and dancing. You can buy all you want to eat and drink. If you don’t enjoy yourself, it will be your own fault.”
So read a July 3, 1889 announcement about Park Ridge’s Independence Day event, as printed in The Local, the weekly newspaper. The editors really had a way with words back then.
It added, “If you attend, it will help a good cause—that of improving the town. Consider yourself urgently invited.”
The hosting organization, the Park Ridge Improvement Association, was a group of like-minded residents who were keen on raising the community up from its rural past and turning it into a modern suburb. In the summer of 1889, they were quite busy. Through fundraising efforts, they had already paid for the installation of 18 street lamps along Pascack Road (then called Main Street), Park Avenue, Ridge Avenue, and around the depot park. Park Ridge was the first village on the railroad line between Hackensack and Spring Valley to have lights illuminating the roads at night.
These were not the kind of streetlights we think of today, as electricity had not yet come to town (this would happen at the beginning of the 20th century). The original lamps burned oil, and a young man with a small wagon would come around to trim the wicks, clean the glass, and refill the fuel each day. Park Ridge residents were very proud of this feature, and the residents loved how railroad travelers admired the lamps when they passed through.
The Improvement Association’s Fourth of July picnic was a fundraiser for additional street lamps, as well as the installation of plank sidewalks in downtown Park Ridge. There would be contests such as hurdle jumping, egg races, and potato sack races. There was an outdoor bowling alley and a baseball game between the Bergen Athletic Association and Pearl River ball clubs. In the evening, there would be music and dancing.
The Local wrote, “It is a good way to spend your money, and everyone expects to spend something on the Fourth. It may be patriotic and all that to look at a lot of colored smoke, burn your fingers, spoil your clothes and deafen yourself for a week, but it will cost no more and will last longer if your put your enthusiasm down in the form of a substantial sidewalk and good street lamps.”