Welcome to the Mr. Local History Project
“A 501c3 Non-Profit Dedicated to Preserving and Promoting Jersey History with a Social Twist”
The Mr. Local History Project is about bringing New Jersey’s past into the present through the stories of real places, real people, and real communities. Focused especially on New Jersey history, the project celebrates local history in a way that feels personal, engaging, and relevant, not something locked away in textbooks, but history that lives where we live. As we head into 2026, the 250th anniversary of the United States, Mr. Local History is turning history into a shared experience. With a social twist, this is about connecting online and in the community, sharing memories, spotlighting hometown stories, and honoring New Jersey’s outsized role in America’s founding. It is history you can explore, share, and be part of together.
Today in America’s History (We Update Every Day)
- 1936: Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last known public execution in the United States.
- 2003: A widescale power blackout affects the northeast United States and Canada.
- 2015: The U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba re-opens after 54 years of being closed when Cuba–United States relations were broken off.
- 2023: Former U.S. president Donald Trump is charged in Georgia along with 18 others in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in that state, his fourth indictment of 2023.
What Can You Do Today to Celebrate America’s 250th?
Our Readers’ Top 10 MLH Posts this Week
Latest Posts
Millington’s Millridge Swim Club Bulldozed Back into the Great Swamp Landscape
Views: 72 Before the Millridge Swim Club existed, it was known as Reggie’s Playland Farm, and we found a strange real estate listing from 2002 that read: After what was Reggie’s Playland Jazz club was sold, the name changed to…
Westfield’s Rialto Theater History and Next Chapter
Views: 89 UPDATE: A New Life for Westfield’s Rialto After sitting largely dormant since closing as a movie theater in 2019, Westfield’s historic Rialto is now headed toward a major rebirth. In July 2026, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority…
Celebrating 100 Years of the Cranford Theater
Views: 389 As Cranford prepares to celebrate the theater’s 100th birthday on November 29, 2026, we’re taking a look back at the little movie house that became a Cranford institution, and the generations of people who have kept coming through…
NJ Cinemas Honored in Exclusive Miniature Wooden Collection
Views: 8,061 Remembering classic movie theaters that not only showed first-rate films, but anchored our towns and kept us full of memories. Three of the last remaining old-time, downtown movie theaters in New Jersey, each with over a century of…
History Remembers Lost Swim Clubs – Now It’s Your Turn
Views: 394 For many families growing up in the Somerset Hills and surrounding communities, summer meant one thing: the local swim club. From the 1950s through the 1980s, private clubs, lakes, beaches, and municipal pools became summertime gathering places where…
Looking Back at Millington’s Clover Hill Swim Club
Views: 1,246 Clover Hill Swimming ClubA Beloved Summer Retreat That Changed New Jersey History PREVIEW RELEASE: For those who subscribe to early releases of Mr Local History Research. Additional updates will be provided as we receive answers to our research…
Reggie’s Playland Farm: A Forgotten Jazz Club in Millington, NJ
Views: 1,353 Our story begins as we were researching another story tied to swim clubs in New Jersey’s Basking Ridge area, and we were preparing a story about Millington’s Clover Hill Swim Club. A fun story you can read later,…
Windsurfing On the Columbia River Gorge in the 80s
Views: 846 Before kiteboarding, before wing foiling, and before extreme sports filled television screens, there was windsurfing, and nowhere captured its spirit quite like the Columbia River Gorge. Throughout the 1980s, this remarkable corridor between Oregon and Washington became the…
Remembering the Columbia River Gorge’s Wind Ranch in the 80s
Views: 1,694 Ah, who remembers the Wind Ranch in Bingen, Washington? Just across the bridge from Hood River was a place, no, an iconic place, that remains now only in my memory. This post is more of a community plea…
1780: The Missing Cemetery at the Basking Ridge Continental Army Hospital
Views: 246 For decades, visitors to Jockey Hollow believed they were standing beside the burial ground of Continental soldiers who died during the terrible winter of 1779–1780. However, archaeological investigations found no human remains, and the National Park Service now…
History Helps Realtors Sell Real Estate
Views: 4,163 Realtors’ History Guide to Selling Basking Ridge, Bernardsville, Bedminster and the Rest of the Somerset Hills, New Jersey It probably comes as no surprise that realtors have a fairly easy time selling homes in Bernards Township and the…
Our Summer 2026 Magazine is HERE!
Full of great local Jersey History to keep you on the edge of your history seat.
Special Edition – America’s 250th The SEMI-QUIN-CENTENNIAL is HERE!
See our special digital magazine. Full of great local Jersey History.