Crim Road is not as old as Mine Road or parts of Papen Road. They appear
on the 1850 Otley & Keily Map of Somerset County, but Crim Road is not shown. However,
it is shown on the 1873 map of Bridgewater. This map shows the homes of Hamilton, Hawkes,
and McNab along the east side of the road. Crim Road was referred to in deeds as "the
road that leads southeasterly from Washington Valley Road to Somerville" as recently
as 1935.
John Crim was a New York attorney who served as the Deputy Attorney
General of the United States in the middle 1920s. In 1917 Mr. Crim bought three tracts of
land from the Plainfield Building Company for use as a country residence and farm known as
Oakland. The Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education later purchased this land. John Crim
and Azeriah Beekman drew up the Martinsville Community Center documents. Crim Road and the
school are named for John Crim.
Crim Rain Gauge. The Somerset County Engineering Department has a gauge
to record rainfall. This data is used to evaluate storms and to compare actual events to
the computer model for the Washington Valley Stormwater Control Area. During Hurricane
Floyd this gauge measured about twelve inches of rain within the twelve hours between 7:00
AM and 7:00 PM.
Crim Primary School.
Crim School opened in September 1968 on eleven acres of former farmland. It
originally housed grades kindergarten through sixth. In 1976 many of the students of the
Green Knoll School, now the Municipal Building, were transferred to the Crim School and
the sixth grade was transferred to the middle schools. By 1995, after more redistricting,
the schools' population reached about 600 students. In the 1995-1996 school year, the Crim
Elementary School became Crim Primary School with about 425 students in grades
kindergarten through third.
Inspect this photograph taken in 1964. 
The road running in a straight diagonal line on the left side is Crim Road and the
field on its’ left side at the edge of the photo is the site of the Elementary
School. See the farm road, where it crosses the brook (hidden in the trees), behind this
field? This is the site of Tom’s Bridge. Now look at the fields
and reread the sections on the old nursery, fields, and road.
Are you ready for a challenge? See if you can find Peeper Pond.
Give up? Then look below for part of the topographic map made from the photographs,
annotated with current sites.
