It Happened in Hillsborough: The Great Flood of 1896

Conductor Kline of the Central Railroad of New Jersey's South Branch division stepped out of the cab of
his idle locomotive and walked with trepidation towards the Neshanic bridge. He had left Flemington at
5:40 pm and had already run through 15 inches of water between Woodfern and Riverview, but this was
a different situation entirely. This was the Great Flood of 1896!

The Great Flood of 1896

The South Branch of the Raritan River had been rising since 9:00 am that morning of February 6, 1896.
By the afternoon, Bound Brook was under six feet of water, and Somerville wasn't much better. All of
the bridges across the Delaware and Raritan Canal were not just washed out but were actually swept
away in the floods. Residents in the towns and villages were huddled on the second floors of their
residences as floodwaters raged through the streets.  Debris of every kind, including drowned livestock,
could be seen floating down the Raritan from Somerville to Bound Brook.

All of the area railroads had already halted traffic as the Millstone, Raritan - North and South Branches
as well as the main stem - and the Neshanic overflowed their banks. At the Black Point bridge near the
mouth of the Neshanic River, the water was already fifteen feet above normal. The situation at the
Neshanic bridge was not good. Rising waters were above the level of the railbed and raging. Kline called
the engineer out to take a look. The bridge abutments had been partially washed away, but the bridge
seemed secure.

Like a scene from a movie, the conductor and engineer walked back to the locomotive, climbed aboard,
and decided to go for it. The engineer built up a head of steam and sent the train speeding over the river
into Hillsborough. Once across, they looked back and saw one of the two sections of the steel bridge
collapse into the river and be carried downstream in the torrent.

They brought the train safely into Somerville - and just in time. By 10:00 pm the Raritan at Somerville
had risen twenty-five feet, and the railroad bridge from Hillsborough into Somerville at the Duke estate
had succumbed to the same fate as the one in Neshanic Station!

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Gregory Gillette has been writing about local history for 20 years, starting with his Courier News column
“Gillette on Hillsborough” and continuing today with a Facebook page of the same name. A recipient of
the Somerset County Cultural and Heritage Commission History Award for Education/Leadership in
2018, he was named as Hillsborough’s first Local Historian in 2025.