The New Milford Plant of the Hackensack Water Company opened on Van Buskirk Island in 1882 and supplied clean drinking water that helped Bergen County develop and prosper. Its buildings and storage reservoir system were expanded a number of times, and the treatment facility operated continuously until 1990. In 1993 the company donated Van Buskirk Island and its nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings to the County of Bergen, after which plans for the island and buildings were debated for nearly two decades before broader agreement began to emerge for the future use of Van Buskirk Island County Park. Long before the water works, members of the Lenni Lenape used the natural resources of the Hackensack River, and in 1677 David de Marets, or Demarest, received a deed for land that included present-day Oradell. Families including the Demarests, Coopers, Van Buskirks, and Van Wagoners settled the area, where farmers and millers worked, dams were built around 1802 along this oxbow section of the river, and mills and docks made it an important industrial center from pre-Revolutionary War times. In 1837 John and Jacob Van Buskirk acquired eleven acres on the west bank of the Hackensack River, including what became known as Van Buskirk's Island, where they built a gristmill. The water works later occupied property of the Jr. and H. Van Buskirk Gristmill, including land with buildings, a mill pond, slough, two mill races, two dams, and Old Creek. From 1882 to 1931, the development of the water works buildings and innovations in water delivery and filtration were nationally significant as a model of water works engineering, combining classical design with technological innovation. The preserved system illustrates advances that enabled cities and towns to deliver purified water on a large scale for the first time, and the plant included not only above-ground structures but also several stories of subterranean pipes, valves, and reservoirs designed to withstand regular inundation. The complex plant employed hundreds of local residents to build and operate it. By the mid-twentieth century, the company maintained extensive chemical laboratories where a large team of scientists continuously analyzed and monitored the water and improved filtration and purification processes, including monitoring bacteria and chemical levels, and these laboratories were said to have set new standards of excellence in water filtration systems. The largest and final addition to the pumping station complex was built in 1911, when Allis-Chalmers constructed and installed the steam-powered No. 7 vertical triple expansion pumping engine, fifty feet tall with two thirty-two-ton flywheels moving 607 gallons of water with each revolution. In 1915, No. 3 Allis-Chalmers 36-MGD pumping engine was installed in the 1886 building; though smaller than No. 7, it had nearly twice the capacity. The company operated these engines for more than seventy years and kept them polished and in immaculate working order until the plant closed. The company and the surrounding community maintained a close relationship based on local employment, resource supply, and the company's role as a good neighbor, and that relationship continued in efforts to create Van Buskirk Island County Park. On November 14, 2009, thirty-two residents of Oradell and New Milford met with experts and officials in a public charrette to share ideas, concerns, and visions for the future of the water works and the island, and the ideas from that meeting continued to guide the ongoing design process.