US Map / Cities / Jersey City

Jersey City Map

Jersey City occupies the peninsula between the Hudson River and Newark Bay, close enough to Lower Manhattan that the two skylines read as one from a distance.

Where is Jersey City?

Jersey City is in northeastern New Jersey, directly across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan — about a mile of water, and a ten-minute PATH ride under it. Newark is roughly five miles west across the Hackensack River and the meadowlands, and New York is, for practical purposes, next door. Philadelphia is about 90 miles southwest. The Holland Tunnel enters Manhattan from here, and much of the city's growth since the 1980s has come from Manhattan office and residential demand crossing the river.

Jersey City at a glance

Jersey City in New Jersey

Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County, the smallest county in New Jersey by area and the most densely populated — the New Jersey county map shows it as a narrow strip along the Hudson. The city has been gaining on Newark for years and the two are close enough in size that the title of largest city in the state is not permanently settled; no third New Jersey city is within a hundred thousand people of either. The waterfront's office towers on the site of the old rail terminals and piers gave the strip its "Gold Coast" name. The New Jersey state page explains why the state's north looks to New York and its south to Philadelphia.

Between two rivers, on a traprock ridge

The city sits on a peninsula: the Hudson on the east, Newark Bay and the Hackensack on the west, with the Kill Van Kull leading out to New York Harbor at the southern end. Running north-south through the middle is Bergen Hill, the southern end of the Hudson Palisades — a ridge of hard diabase that rail tunnels had to be cut through and that still divides the city's waterfront from its inland neighborhoods. The Hudson is a drowned river valley, so deep water comes right up to the shore — the drowned valleys are what give the Atlantic coast its harbors. Most of the flat land along both shores is fill, laid over tidal marsh in the nineteenth century for railroad terminals that no longer exist; Liberty State Park occupies a large piece of that ground. Ellis Island lies just offshore, and after a Supreme Court ruling in 1998 the filled majority of the island belongs to New Jersey, though Liberty Island and the statue on it are New York.

Cities near Jersey City

Newark is minutes west and New York minutes east; further out are Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston along the Northeast Corridor. Jersey City and Newark are New Jersey's two entries on the list of the hundred largest cities, and four miles apart.