1826 - The Adminission of the State of New Jersey into the Union
For some years, people in the cities of Philadelphia, New York, Wilmington, and Wilkes-Barre had been disposing on their garbage and sewage by simply throwing into the various rivers and tributaries in the area, or even directly into the ocean. Either way, the slurry of toxic chemicals, feces, dead animals, Wawa coffee cups, and styrofoam ended up in the ocean eventually. In 1782, the beaches in Philadelphia and Trenton were closed permanentlty as the concentration of waste made it neither desirable or practical to swim in the waters of the Atlantic anymore. In fact, by 1790, one would have to walk a full mile from the beach in Philadelphia to get to the ocean. However, the wasteful and destructive pollution continued, and the mounds of waste continue to settle and grow offshore until the turn of the century when the Atlantic Ocean had been pushed back a full 50 miles from its original location.
Land developers who had lost a fortune selling beach houses along the 1-95 "Coastal Highway" as it was then known came up with a new ingenious plan to aleviate overcrowding in the cities and provide affordable housing to lower income families. In 1812, while the war with the Brittish raged on, a draft dodger by the name of Eaten L. Jersey, Jr. began developing condos, 50-plus communities, and row homes on the former useless pile of impacted waste. Though slow to start, people began migrating by the thousands to the unnamed land mass, using poorly documented adjustable rate mortgage loans to buy their dream home. Until that time, few ventured to the edge of the water for fear of falling through the yet unstable garbage/feces land mass or stepping on a rusty needle. However during the hurricane of 1820, the garbage was solidified, and the coast covered in sand again.
In 1826, after a bitter legal battle between Pennsylvania and New York as to who would have to take on the burden of annexing this nameless land mass, it was decided that neither was willing to do so, and so it became its own state. In Newark at certain times of year, if you inhale deeply enough, you can still smell the toxic slurry that originally formed this small state.