TOMS RIVER, NJ – In the 1980s, life was simple. There were no cell phones. The internet was a thing college geeks did on old text terminals, and you only needed to dial 7 numbers to make a call.
That is unless you were in South Jersey and wanted to call North Jersey and vice versa.
Historical Map Debunks Existence of Central Jersey
There was also just North Jersey, and South Jersey, and the two regions were clearly defined by two boundaries. Central Jersey didn’t exist.
First, there was the physical boundary that separated the two areas, the Raritan River. Then there was a virtual boundary created by the telephone company at the time, Bell Atlantic.
An old telephone area code map of New Jersey published this week on Reddit once and for all ends the debate about the existence of Central Jersey, proving it is a concept invented by self-hating North Jersey transplants in ‘Central Jersey’. It proves Central Jersey was an idea concocted up by North Jersey residents who moved south, but didn’t want to tell their friends they now live in South Jersey.
Battle of North And South
The map showed a clear boundary used for decades to define the state’s north and south and didn’t even entertain the notion of a central region. New Jersey is one of the country’s smallest states, so it couldn’t possibly have a central region. That is nothing but pure anti-science developed in the early 1990s when the 908 area came out, compounded even more with the addition of the 732 area code.
New Jersey was once unified under the 201 area code since the inception of the North American Numbering Plan was introduced in 1947. For old-timers, there was no north and south. They all lived as one, reading the Star-Ledger, a North Jersey paper, and the Asbury Park Press, a South Jersey paper, in the same sitting. There was no division. There were no boundaries.
Benny Hill
In 1958, the state was split in half between 609 and 201, which also became the unofficial boundary between North and South Jersey. The official boundary is actually the Raritan River, marked by the Driscoll Bridge. One side is North Jersey. The other side is South Jersey.
There was a time when the northern Jersey Shore was considered the lower suburbs of North Jersey. That changed when the shore got its own 908 area code in the great Central Jersey cessation of 1991.
In 1997, the debate was further exacerbated by the creation of the 732 area code.
A Sharply Divided State
New Jersey now has 11 area codes that divide the state into six regions. Area codes for many matter as much as exits on the Garden State Parkway these days. The 201 area code is now just the northeast which also shares the 551 cell phone exchange. 973 covers the northwest with the 862 cell phone exchange. 732 represents the northern Jersey Shore with the 848 cell phone exchange.
908 and 856 cover their respective areas, while 609 is still viewed by many as the deep south, along with the 640 cell phone exchange.