New Jersey's highest point, 1,803 feet above sea level, is at High Point near the New York border. The Kittatinny Mountains average 1,600 feet above sea level. The Sussex Highlands range upwards to 1,496 feet above sea level near Vernon. All of this lake land and mountain land makes for fine scenery. Many observers agree that New Jersey's scenic best is in Sussex County.

But it was neither cows nor scenery that brought the first Europeans to Sussex. They were Dutchmen from what is now Kingston, New York, who found copper on the rocky mountain slope just north of the Delaware Water Gap, sometime in the 1640's. As they took the ore back along the mountains, they developed a 140-mile thoroughfare linking the Pahaquarry copper mine with Esopus (Kingston, New York).

English, Irish, and Scotch immigrants came overland soon after 1700 to the Kittatinny slopes, which they called the "Blue" mountains. Germans came up from Philadelphia in the 1740's, led by John Peter Bernhardt, and Caspar Shafer, and settled along the Tockhokkonetkong River, now called by the more easily pronounceable name of Paulins Kill.

Scarcely 600 people lived in the whole Sussex region in 1750 when settlers began to grumble about going all the way to Morristown for court business. There were no towns, no major plantations, and little economic value in the vast area when the colonial legislature created Sussex County on June 8, 1753.

Leaders of the new county met on November 20, 1753, to grant tavern licenses and to fix fees for liquor and provender. This reflected a major interest of the day, since for many decades the tavern keeper was an important man in Sussex county economic and political circles.

In the spring of 1754, county fathers levied taxes of 100 pounds annually; most of it to pay bounties for the killing of wolves and panthers. The rest went to build a log jail so flimsy the sheriff complained he couldn't keep the prisoners in. The prisoners, in turn. said they wouldn't stay in the jail if the sheriff couldn't keep the sheep out.

Sussex courts returned temporarily to Morristown in 1757, driven there by savage Indian uprisings along the Delaware valley. Long bitter over the loss of their territory, the Indians struck back at white settlers in 1755. Colonial officials appropriated 10,000 pounds in December of that year to build stone forts along the river.

Most noted of the killings by Indians took place near Swartswood Lake, where in May 1756, Anthony Swartwout, his wife and a daughter were slain by the savages, and two younger children became Indian captives.

In 1758 the Indians were persuaded to relinquish their territorial claims peacefully, but another conflict already was raging in the not-so-peaceful Sussex hills. That was the New York-New Jersey border conflict which involved many beatings and shootings in the 50 years after it first broke out in 1719. Bi-state action fixed the border at its present line in 1769.

1761 saw New Town (now Newton) come to prominence through the actions of Jonathan Hampton, an Essex county man of some influence in Trenton. The Legislature authorized the county to build a courthouse and jail a half mile from Henry Hairlocker's house. When the survey was made, it was found that the half mile point would have put the courthouse in the middle of a stream. With this in mind, the "half mile" was stretched and the courthouse situated halfway up the hill.

On the eve of the Revolution, in 1775, the freeholders boldly announced that Sussex County would no longer pay the salaries of Royal judges. The war itself passed Sussex by except for supplies which came from both the fields and forges of the northern county. The county also contributed Bonnell Moody, a well-known Loyalist spy who hid out in a cave near Springdale.

Building of turnpike between 1804 and 1815 
1820 county population was 32,754 making it the most populated in the state (Sussex at this time included what is now Warren county) 
1824 Warren county is split from Sussex 
1830 county population was 20,346 
1833, William Rankin founded the private school at Deckertown 
1833, Edward Stiles opened a school at Mt. Retirement 
1853, a town meeting in Newton rejected the idea of raising money for free schools 
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