Pompton Lakes is a borough in Passaic County, New Jersey, set in the Ramapo Mountains roughly 20 miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan. It is a classic northern New Jersey lakeside town: two recreational lakes and three rivers — the Ramapo, Pequannock, and Wanaque — run through or border the borough, and the 175-acre Pompton Lake, created by a dam on the Ramapo River in 1908, anchors the eastern edge of town. From higher elevations, residents can see the New York City skyline, a reminder of how close the borough sits to the region's urban core. The area was settled in the late 1600s and began to develop more seriously in the early 1700s after the discovery of iron ore, which drew early industry to the Ramapo Valley. It remained part of Pompton Township until 1895, when Pompton Lakes split off and incorporated as its own borough. Through much of the 20th century the community balanced its residential and recreational character with local manufacturing, including a long-running DuPont works; today it functions primarily as a quiet outer-ring suburb, with many residents commuting to New York City and northern New Jersey employment centers. With about 11,000 residents, Pompton Lakes is small enough to feel self-contained. It has its own K-12 school district, a recreation commission that runs year-round programs, and lakefront parkland along a redeveloped shoreline on Lakeside Avenue. The borough's layout places older single-family homes on compact lots around a modest downtown, while the lake and the Ramapo Mountain ridges shape the edges of town. The appeal of Pompton Lakes lies in the combination of that small-town, water-centered lifestyle with genuine proximity to the region's economy. Families are drawn by the local schools and recreation, commuters by the direct bus link to the Port Authority, and outdoors-oriented residents by the fishing, paddling, and hiking in and around the borough. For those who want a lake-oriented community within the New York metro orbit rather than a dense, fully suburbanized township, Pompton Lakes offers a distinctive, enduring niche.