Passaic is a compact, densely populated city in southeastern Passaic County, New Jersey, occupying a few square miles along the Passaic River. It lies within the New York metropolitan area, about ten miles north of Newark and roughly twelve miles west of Manhattan, placing its residents within commuting distance of the region's largest employment centers. The city traces its origins to 1679, when Dutch settlers established a community called Acquackanonk on the river. For its first two centuries the settlement remained small and agricultural, but the nineteenth century transformed it. As water-powered industry developed along the Passaic River, the city became a center for textile and metalworking production. The Botany Worsted Mills, established in 1889, grew into one of the largest woolen mills in the United States and became emblematic of the city's industrial identity. That industrial expansion fueled rapid population growth, from a few thousand residents in the late nineteenth century to more than fifty thousand by 1910. Much of the growth came through immigration, particularly from eastern Europe; Hungarian, Slovak, and Polish communities put down roots in the city's neighborhoods, and later waves of immigration broadened the mix further. That ethnic diversity remains one of the city's defining characteristics. Today Passaic functions as a dense urban center within a larger metropolitan corridor. Its street grid, older brick and frame housing stock, and commercial thoroughfares reflect its industrial-era growth, while its proximity to Newark, Paterson, and New York City keeps it closely tied to the regional economy. The city remains a working-class community with a substantial renter population and an active small-business sector concentrated along its main commercial avenues.