Wyckoff Turns 100 This Year. The Town Isn't Sure It Wants to Do This Again.

Wyckoff spent most of its first two centuries getting smaller. Ho-Ho-Kus broke away in 1849. Ridgewood followed in 1876. Midland Park split off in 1894, Oakland in 1902, and Franklin Lakes in 1922. By the time voters cast the ballot that gave the township its current name on November 2, 1926, what had once been the much larger Franklin Township had shrunk down to the roughly seven square miles residents now call Wyckoff. Every one of those breakaway towns is a name Bergen County shoppers recognize today. All of them were, at some point, part of the same municipal body Wyckoff grew out of.

That history sat mostly in library archives until this year, when the township decided its 100th birthday deserved a real calendar. Three signature events anchored it: a formal Centennial Gala on March 21 at the Brick House, a Main Street block party and fireworks display on June 27, and a historic cemetery tour scheduled for October 24. Two of the three are already behind us. The last one is just under eight weeks out, and it's the piece of this centennial year that tells you the most about how the town actually thinks about its own past.

What's Left on the Calendar

If you were at the June 27 street fair, you already know it doubled as a schedule swap. Wyckoff's community day typically lands on a Saturday in September, but for the centennial year, the township folded it into the June date instead, running the Main Street portion from late morning into the afternoon before the crowd shifted to Memorial Field on Woodland Avenue for evening fireworks. Newer vendors joined the usual mix of exhibitors, food trucks handed out everything from Cuban plates to snow cones, and Mayor Roger Lane, sworn in at the start of this centennial year after serving as a longtime mayor of New Milford, called it out as the celebration's big Saturday.

That leaves the cemetery tour as the only major public event still ahead. The township hasn't yet published a start time, a registration link, or a confirmed route, so residents planning around it should keep an eye on the township's centennial page rather than assuming details that haven't been posted. What we do know is the kind of ground a tour like this would likely cover. Wyckoff's oldest and best documented burial ground is the cemetery tied to the Wyckoff Reformed Church, a congregation dating to 1801 whose graveyard predates even that. The plots there hold names that show up on street signs and historical markers across town today: Demarest, Hopper, Van Blarcom, Van Ripper, Christie. Some of the marked graves belong to Revolutionary War veterans. The cemetery itself, run separately as a nonsectarian burial ground by the Wyckoff Reformed Church Cemetery Association, covers eight acres and has operated for more than 200 years, originating as an extension of the church around 1806. Individual families managed their own plots until 1923, when a nonprofit corporation was formed in 1935 to handle perpetual care going forward. A second historic site, Union Cemetery, holds its own claim as the burial ground of the Van Blarcom family and predates the Revolution as well.

Whichever ground the October tour walks through, it's tied to the same families whose descendants likely still show up at township meetings and coach youth sports leagues today. That continuity is the actual point of a centennial cemetery tour. It's not a spooky-season detour. It's a direct line between the founders whose names are on the headstones and the town that's still built on the same seven square miles they settled.

The Gala Already Happened. Now What?

Here's the part of the centennial story that doesn't show up on the event flyers. After the June 27 street fair wrapped, the township quietly launched an anonymous survey asking residents a fairly direct question: should Wyckoff host more community events like this one, what kind, and how often? It runs about eight pages but takes roughly three minutes to complete, and it's the only formal channel residents currently have to weigh in on whether Centennial Day becomes the first instance of something recurring or stays a one-time marker for a milestone year.

That's a more interesting question than it sounds. A hundred years ago, Wyckoff's shape wasn't settled either. It changed five separate times as neighboring communities peeled off and incorporated on their own. The town residents live in today isn't the town that existed in 1926, and the town that exists in 2027 will partly depend on whether officials read this survey as a mandate to keep building on what the centennial started or to let it stand as a single, well-earned celebration. Either answer is reasonable. What's notable is that the township is actually asking instead of just deciding on its own, which says something about how this administration wants to run things going forward.

The New Jersey State Legislature also passed a formal resolution this year recognizing Wyckoff's 100th anniversary, a bit of Trenton ceremony that doesn't change anything practical about daily life here but does confirm the milestone is being marked at more than just the local level.

Why This Matters If You Live Here

None of this changes property lines or school boundaries. It doesn't need to. What it does is put a number on something residents already sense without articulating it: Wyckoff's borders, its identity, and even its community calendar have never been fixed points. They've been renegotiated repeatedly, sometimes by ballot measure, sometimes by township committee vote, and this year, potentially, by an eight-page survey most residents will complete in under five minutes.

If you're new to town, that context is useful shorthand for understanding why Wyckoff feels the way it does compared to Ridgewood or Franklin Lakes just a few minutes down the road. Those towns aren't just neighbors. They're former pieces of the same municipal puzzle, split off at different moments over nearly a century, each developing its own downtown, its own school system, its own civic personality after the fact. Wyckoff is what was left once the splitting stopped in 1922.

If you've lived here for decades, the cemetery tour is worth putting on the calendar for a more direct reason. The families buried in that ground aren't abstractions. They're the reason certain roads carry the names they do, the reason certain historical markers exist at all. A hundred years is long enough that most of that context fades into background noise. A tour built around it, even an informal one led by whatever local historians the township lines up, is a rare chance to hear it explained out loud.

What to Watch For

Keep an eye on the township's centennial page for tour logistics as October approaches. The gala and street fair both had their details finalized only a few weeks ahead of time, so a similar timeline for the cemetery tour wouldn't be unusual. And if the post-centennial survey results ever get shared publicly, that's worth watching too. It'll answer the question this whole year has been quietly asking: whether 2026 was Wyckoff throwing itself one big party to mark a milestone, or whether it was the town deciding, a hundred years after its last major identity shift, that it likes doing this enough to make it a habit.

Either way, the last item on the calendar is a walk through ground that's been part of this community since before Wyckoff had its current name, its current borders, or its current neighbors. That's worth an afternoon in October.

Whether you're settled in Wyckoff for the long haul or still getting to know the town's rhythms, Madison Group keeps a close eye on what's actually happening here, block by block and season by season. Reach out anytime you want a local read on the town, no listing required.