What happened to New Jersey's historical markers?
There’s a sign in Mendham that says Civil War General Abner Doubleday [https://hometownhistory.substack.com/p/episode-1-where-are-you-from] once lived there.
For a lot of people driving through town, that sign might be the only piece of Mendham history they ever encounter. It’s a small thing — a welcome sign perched on the side of the road — but it carries a surprising amount of weight. It tells passersby: this happened here, this place matters, this town has a story.
But signs are never neutral. Someone decides what goes on them and where they get placed.
And in New Jersey, those decisions have become even more complicated because of one surprising fact: out of 455 official state historical markers installed over the last hundred years, about 330 are missing.
So what happened to them?
That’s the question at the center of the New Jersey Historical Commission’s revamped Historical Marker Program [https://nj.gov/state/historical/historical-markers.shtml] — and the reason we partnered with the Commission to explore the strange, surprisingly fragile life of these roadside pieces of history.
A Century of Signs
When people talk about historical markers, they’re usually referring to those aluminum signs mounted on poles — the ones you see in parks, downtowns, along roadsides, or outside old buildings. These are not town welcome signs or privately made plaques. They are official markers placed by the state of New Jersey.
The oldest of New Jersey’s markers date back to the 1920s. There were several major eras when the state made a concerted effort to install them, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, and then again in the 1960s.
But the early history of the program is murky.
“The New Jersey Historical Commission was created in 1967,” Rachel Thimke of the New Jersey Historical Commission explained. “So even the markers that came in, in the 1920s and thirties, we would’ve never seen that because we didn’t exist.”
Before the Commission took charge, there does not appear to have been one comprehensive historical marker program. Instead, markers were likely installed by different departments at different times, often for different reasons. Some may have been part of a public works effort during the Great Depression, others may have been tied to later commemorations.
The result was a scattered paper trail — one that became harder to follow with every passing decade.
Until finally, in 2009, the New Jersey state legislature formally gave the New Jersey Historical Commission responsibility for overseeing the roadside marker program.
“In 2009 the state legislator passed a bill saying, ‘Historical Commission, it’s up to you to oversee these roadside markers and to continue a roadside marker program’” Thimke said.
By then, hundreds of markers had already been installed across the state. But no one had a perfect record of what was still standing, what had been removed, and what had simply disappeared.
What Happened to Them?
The challenge the Historical Commission faced was daunting, like taking over a class project from someone who last touched it forty years ago.
“The first step was to get that survey of, okay, what is the current landscape? What are we working with?” Thimke said. “When are these markers from, what information do we currently have on them? What’s still there and what isn’t?”
The Commission also relied on members of the public to help crowdsource information. People went out into their communities, looked for markers, and reported back on whether they were still there.
The results were startling. Of the 455 known markers, only about 125 are still standing.
In many cases, the Commission does not know exactly what happened to the missing ones. There is no single dramatic culprit; no statewide historical marker thief; no grand conspiracy.
Instead, the explanation seems to be more ordinary — and in some ways, more revealing.
Time happened. Weather happened. Maintenance didn’t happen.
Leah Baer, who helped verify which markers were still standing and which were missing, said some of the older signs simply deteriorated due to acid rain.
“Especially the ones with very flimsy material were not the sturdiest,” Baer said. “So we got an image from someone who had a 1960s one, and it was very deteriorated to the point where it was not legible at all.”
And once a marker became unreadable, it could become more of an eyesore than a public history tool.
“So it just gets taken down and ends up in a basement somewhere,” Baer said. “And that’s the sad tale of probably a lot of these markers.”
The irony here is that historical markers are supposed to preserve memory. They are designed to remind people that something important happened in a particular place. But over time, the markers themselves have become historical artifacts — objects that now need to be located, documented, replaced, and preserved. They created their own preservation problem.
Why Not Just Replace Them All?
Once you learn that more than 300 markers are missing, the obvious question is: why not just put them back? The answer is more complicated than it seems.
The New Jersey Historical Commission does not want to simply recreate old markers because someone, somewhere, once decided a story belonged on a sign.
“Kind of our whole ethos as we’re coming into this is we don’t wanna go into a community and be like, ‘Hey, a hundred years ago someone decided that this was important to your town,’” Thimke said. “We wanna make sure that this is really community driven, that folks are coming to us saying, ‘We appreciate this marker. We want it back.’”
That community-driven approach shaped the Commission’s 2025 application process. Residents, municipalities, and organizations were invited to apply either to replace missing markers or propose new ones.
The timing was intentional. The application period was tied to the upcoming commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, giving the state a chance to rethink which stories should be highlighted as New Jersey approaches the semiquincentennial.
“We wanna make sure that this is really community driven, that folks are coming to us saying, ‘We appreciate this marker. We want it back.’”
This year, 67 applications were considered. Of those, 42 markers will be placed in this round.
But even if more communities want markers, there are limits. For one thing, they are not cheap: fabricating a historical marker costs just under $3,000.
And while it might seem like a private citizen or local donor could simply pay to replace one, the Commission is cautious about that approach. The old markers need more than new metal - they need a historical audit.
“Our preference would definitely be for us to take care of it,” Thimke said. “And one of the really big ones is to do a historical audit because again, we’re looking at the 1920s and thirties. We have learned so much in that time. It’s very possible that what we thought was true in 1936, we now understand it’s not. So we don’t wanna put up fresh markers with inaccurate information.”
Local history is full of stories that were repeated for generations before anyone checked the evidence carefully. The Abner Doubleday sign in Mendham is a good example. Doubleday did live in Mendham, but the claim that he founded modern baseball is widely disputed.
That sign is not an official state historical marker. But it shows how easily well-intentioned local history can harden into public memory. That’s why getting the story right matters.
Do People Still Read Signs?
The renewed marker program also raises a bigger question: what role do physical signs play in an age when most of us get information from screens?
When many of New Jersey’s original markers went up in the 1920s and 1930s, people were more likely to be walking through town, lingering in public spaces, and encountering information in the physical world. A roadside marker may have been a genuine invitation to stop and learn something.
Today, we are often driving past, looking at our phones, or moving too quickly to notice the landscape around us.
Historical markers can start to blend into the background — part of the visual wallpaper of a place. The Commission knows that, too, which is why these new markers are designed to be harder to ignore.
“They’re gonna be fairly large,” Thimke said. “They’re gonna be at eye level. If you’re walking past them, you’re gonna have to try really hard to ignore it.”
That may be the quiet power of a good historical marker. It interrupts the ordinary landscape just enough to make you look again.
An Audio Historical Marker
In a way, that is also what we try to do here at Hometown History NJ.
A podcast is not a metal sign on a pole. But it can work like one. It can point to a place and say: Check out this story you might have missed. This is why this town matters. Here is something worth remembering.
Over the next two weeks, we’ll be sharing two stories from the New Jersey Historical Commission’s list of sites in need of a new historic marker. Because local history is not just about the stories we inherit. It’s also about the stories we choose to keep visible.
This story was written and produced by Ryan Ross and Katie Feather. Special thanks to Rachel Thimke and Leah Baer at the New Jersey Historical Commission. Podcast episode image courtesy of the New Jersey Historical Commission.
For more information about historical markers around the country, visit the Historical Marker Database at hmdb.org [https://www.hmdb.org/].
To support New Jersey’s historical marker program, you can help identify missing markers in your town. Visit history.nj.gov [https://nj.gov/state/historical/historical-markers.shtml] to see a comprehensive list of every marker in the state. Applications for the next round of markers will open in 2027.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hometownhistory.substack.com [https://hometownhistory.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]
