US Map / Cities / Newark

Newark Map

Newark is New Jersey's largest city, set on the Passaic River where it opens into Newark Bay, close enough to Manhattan to be part of its working day.

Where is Newark?

Newark is in northeastern New Jersey, about eight miles west of Lower Manhattan across the Hudson and the meadowlands. Jersey City sits between the two, roughly five miles east on the far side of the Hackensack. New York itself is a fifteen-minute train ride; Philadelphia is about 85 miles southwest down the corridor, and Trenton, the state capital, is roughly 50 miles along the same line. Newark is a suburb of nothing — it was a manufacturing city long before it was a commuter town — but its position inside the New York metropolitan area governs almost everything about it.

Newark at a glance

Newark in New Jersey

Newark is the seat of Essex County and the largest city in New Jersey, ahead of Jersey City next door; the two are the only New Jersey cities in the national top 100, and the New Jersey county map shows how tightly the state's 21 counties are packed into the northeast. New Jersey has no dominant single city, because its northern half looks to New York and its southern half to Philadelphia — a split the New Jersey state page explains. Newark was settled in 1666 by Puritans from Connecticut, which makes it older than almost every city of its size in the country.

Bay, port and airport

The Passaic River runs past downtown and empties a mile or two south into Newark Bay, which drains through the Kill Van Kull to New York Harbor. The flat, filled marshland between the city and the bay carries two things that shape the whole region: Newark Liberty International Airport, and Port Newark-Elizabeth, where containerized shipping effectively began — the first container ship sailed from Port Newark in 1956, and the terminal is now the busiest on the East Coast. North of the city the Hackensack Meadowlands, a large brackish wetland, kept development out for a century and now carry the highways and rail lines into New York. West of downtown the ground climbs onto the First Watchung Mountain, a basalt ridge that marks the inland edge of the Atlantic coastal plain and the start of hillier suburbs.

Cities near Newark

Jersey City and New York are minutes away, Philadelphia is down the corridor, and Boston and Baltimore sit at either end of the Northeast. The Mid-Atlantic division page covers New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania together.