About the town » Piscataway, Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States

Piscataway Township is a township in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 56,044, reflecting an increase of 5,562 (+11.0%) from the 50,482 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 3,393 (+7.2%) from the 47,089 counted in the 1990 Census. The name Piscataway may stem from the area's original European settlers, transplants from near the Piscataqua River defining the coastal border between New Hampshire and Maine, whose name derives from peske (branch) and tegwe (tidal river), or alternatively from pisgeu (meaning "dark night") and awa ("Place of") or from a Lenape language word meaning "Great Deer". The area was first settled in 1666 by Quakers and Baptists who had left the Puritan colony in New Hampshire. Piscataway is in the Trenton-Princeton-New Brunswick metropolitan area. Piscataway Township was formed on December 18, 1666, and officially incorporated by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on February 21, 1798, as part of the state's initial group of 104 townships. The community, the fifth oldest municipality in New Jersey, has grown from Native American territory, through a colonial period and is one of the links in the earliest settlement of the Atlantic Ocean seacoast that ultimately led to the formation of the United States. Over the years, portions of Piscataway were taken to form Raritan Township (March 17, 1870, now Edison), Dunellen (October 28, 1887), Middlesex (April 9, 1913) and South Plainfield (March 10, 1926). Society Hill (with a 2010 Census population of 3,829) is a census-designated place and unincorporated community located within Piscataway Township. Piscataway has advanced educational and research facilities due to the presence of Rutgers University and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. High Point Solutions Stadium, home field for the Rutgers Scarlet Knights football team, is in Piscataway, and was renamed in 2011 as part of a deal that will pay the university more than $6 million over 10 years. In 2008, Money magazine ranked Piscataway 23rd out of the top 100 places to live in America.