Rockaway Township covers a broad, wooded swath of northwestern Morris County, New Jersey, wrapping around the smaller borough of Rockaway and reaching into the state's highlands. Organized in 1844, the township grew out of the region's iron industry: the area's mines and furnaces supplied ore for more than two centuries, and that heritage is still visible at the Split Rock Furnace, a Civil War-era iron furnace that remains intact, and the 1768 Ford-Faesch Manor House, a stone mansion tied to the Revolutionary War and Morris County's iron era. Today the township's roughly 25,000 residents are distributed across a patchwork of lake communities rather than a single downtown. White Meadow Lake is by far the largest, its 141-acre lake ringed by homes, followed by smaller lakeside enclaves such as Mount Hope, Lake Telemark, Green Pond, Hibernia, Marcella, and Split Rock. This structure gives Rockaway Township a distinctly outdoors-oriented, small-community character: many neighborhoods are organized around private beaches, clubhouses, and lake access, and the township holds thousands of acres of public open space and parkland. Employment and commuting are shaped by two anchors. The U.S. Army's Picatinny Arsenal, one of the nation's oldest armament research and engineering facilities, sits partly within the township and ranks among the region's largest employers, drawing engineers, scientists, and civilian staff. For everyone else, Interstate 80 and Route 15 provide the main corridors toward Morristown, Parsippany, and, via connecting rail and bus service from nearby Dover and Denville, New York City. The combination of lakefront living, preserved open space, and a long industrial history gives Rockaway Township a character distinct from both the denser towns to its east and the more rural reaches of Morris County to its west. It suits households that want the amenities of a close-knit lake community and the access of a major interstate, without the density of the county's older downtown towns.