Lakewood

Lakewood is a township in Ocean County, New Jersey, in the pine country of the coastal plain between New York and Philadelphia. It is the home of Beth Medrash Govoha, a Jewish religious college that has drawn Orthodox families to the town since the 1940s.

In the early 19th century an ironworks on the Metedeconk River smelted bog iron from the local swamps, and the village around it was called Bergen Iron Works. The town took the name Lakewood in 1880, when developers began to promote it as a winter resort among the pines. Hotels and estates of wealthy New Yorkers, among them John D. Rockefeller, were built there in the decades before the First World War. The Laurel House was among the large hotels that drew guests by train from New York for the winter season. George Jay Gould built Georgian Court, a mansion with formal gardens, which later became the campus of Georgian Court University.

The Lakewood Industrial Park, on the east side of the township, holds food plants, printers and warehouses. Kosher food made in the township is sold to Orthodox communities across the Northeast.

Ocean County Park, the former Rockefeller estate, has woods and sports fields, with a pond for fishing. Lake Carasaljo, a long lake in the center, takes its name from the daughters of an ironworks owner, Caroline, Sally and Josephine, and is ringed with a path for walking and cycling. The Jersey Shore BlueClaws play minor league baseball at ShoreTown Ballpark in the east of the township.