Port Murray, NJ

Port Murray is a Warren County census-designated place within Mansfield Township, with 227 people at the 2020 census. The community was created as a CDP for the 2010 census and uses ZIP Code 07865. Its name points to the Morris Canal and Colonel James Boyles Murray, the canal company's third president. The canal opened through Port Murray in 1831, bringing a boat basin, an inclined plane, and a canal store into the local map.

The Morris and Essex Railroad arrived in 1850, and Port Murray became Mansfield's only railroad station as canal, rail, and later trolley routes converged. The Port Murray Historic District contains 88 acres and was listed on the National Register in 1996; its surviving pieces include the canal and towpath, the railroad station, row houses built for dairy workers, and the McCrea Memorial Methodist Church. Warren County's heritage byway still follows the canal corridor through the village. Port Murray is a New Jersey community whose name sounds nautical because its first regional job was moving goods by water, then by rail, through the Warren County valleys.