NJ’s smallest town now has 3 residents, and it’s not Walpack

Last week, I told you Walpack went from seven residents to eight. I figured that made it New Jersey’s smallest town.

New census estimates put tiny Tavistock in Camden County at just three people, down from nine in the 2020 census. That’s the smallest population of any of New Jersey’s 564 municipalities, according to estimates from the New Jersey Department of Labor.

Three people. Fewer than a Wawa on a slow night.

Tavistock has a wild backstory. It became a borough in 1921 for one reason: so members of the Tavistock Country Club could play golf on Sundays. Their old club in Haddonfield sat under a local blue law that banned Sunday sports, according to its Wikipedia entry. So the members, with help from a couple of friendly lawmakers, made their own town.

It’s about a quarter of a square mile, mostly golf course. Interstate 295 runs right through it.

Teterboro is mostly airport. Mantoloking, Harvey Cedars and Cape May Point are beach towns where the summer crowd dwarfs the year-round count.

Loch Arbour has its own story. Residents broke away from Ocean Township in 1957 to stop condos from going up on their beach. Back in 1892, heavyweight boxer James J. Corbett set up his training camp there, Wikipedia notes.

Just outside the top 10 is Corbin City, Atlantic County’s smallest town at 486 people, just south of Mays Landing, where I grew up.

Corbin City used to have a restaurant called the Corbin House, on Route 50. My parents went there on date nights, and I remember going once as a family. In the ’80s, in my 20s, I took my own dates there.

It always felt special, one of those out-of-the-way places we’d now call a hidden gem. It was known for seafood, Sunday chicken and dumplings and live piano on weekends. The Corbin House is long gone, but Corbin City’s local history website still has an old menu.

Walpack may have lost the title, but it gained a resident, and it’s still a ghost town inside the Delaware Water Gap. I am still heading up there next month.

As for Tavistock, getting in would take a lot of money and a decent golf swing. I have neither. I’ll stick with Walpack.