Layton, NJ

Layton is a Sussex County census-designated place within Sandyston Township, two miles from the Delaware River. The 2020 census counted 692 residents. John Layton settled the crossroads around 1800, when the place was known as Centreville; the name later shifted to Layton after a mail petition. Little Flat Brook runs through the center, once supplying power for mills, and the old road junction still gives the hamlet its shape. By 1860, Layton had a church, stores, post office, blacksmith, cooperage, sawmill, gristmill, hotel, and more than fifteen homes.

Most of that commercial strip is history now, but the setting remains easy to read: mountain roads come together at the brook, and the Dingman's Ferry Bridge crosses the Delaware nearby into Pennsylvania. The old crossroads still carries that weight. Sandyston Township supplies the civic structure, while the Delaware Water Gap region supplies the larger landscape. Layton's local scoop is a New Jersey hamlet where a mill brook and a river crossing still reveal why the crossroads mattered.