Watsessing Park is a park

Park

A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...

 in Essex County, New Jersey

Essex County, New Jersey

Essex County is a county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the United States 2010 Census, the population was 783,969, ranking it third in the state after Bergen County and Middlesex County; Essex County's population has declined from 786,147 as of the bureau's...

, in the city of East Orange

East Orange, New Jersey

East Orange is a city in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census the city's population 64,270, making it the state's 20th largest municipality, having dropped 5,554 residents from its population of 69,824 in the 2000 Census, when it was the state's 14th most...

 and the town of Bloomfield

Bloomfield, New Jersey

Bloomfield is a township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 47,315. It surrounds the Bloomfield Green Historic District.-History:...

. The park covers 69 acres (279,000 m²), just west of the Garden State Parkway

Garden State Parkway

The Garden State Parkway is a 172.4-mile limited-access toll parkway that stretches the length of New Jersey from the New York line at Montvale, New Jersey, to Cape May at New Jersey's southernmost tip. Its name refers to New Jersey's nickname, the "Garden State." Most New Jersey residents refer...

, and contains the confluence of the Second River

Second River (New Jersey)

The Second River, or Watsessing River, in the state of New Jersey in the United States, is the second main tributary of the Passaic River encountered while travelling upstream from its mouth at Newark Bay....

 and Toney's Brook

Toney's Brook

Toney's Brook is a tributary of the Second River in Essex County, New Jersey in the United States.Toney's Brook originates in Montclair just northwest of the Upper Montclair railway station. In Montclair it is joined by two tributary streams and continues through Anderson Park, Edgemont Memorial...

.

The name "Watsessing" comes from the language of the Lenni Lenape Indians

Lenape

The Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...

 who inhabited the area before European colonization

European colonization of the Americas

The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492. The first Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement in present day Newfoundland...

; it means "crooked" or "elbow". This etymology might have been related to the Third River

Third River (New Jersey)

The Third River is the third main tributary of the Passaic River in the northern portion of the U.S. state of New Jersey. It has also been known as the Yantecaw River....

, which also flows through Bloomfield (though not through Watsessing Park), and which forms an abrupt elbow near the town's center.

Watsessing Park was designed in 1899 by the famous Olmsted Brothers

Olmsted Brothers

The Olmsted Brothers company was an influential landscape design firm in the United States, formed in 1898 by stepbrothers John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. .-History:...

 of Brookline, Massachusetts

Brookline, Massachusetts

Brookline is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States, which borders on the cities of Boston and Newton. As of the 2010 census, the population of the town was 58,732.-Etymology:...

 (sons of Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...

, designer of Manhattan's

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 Central Park

Central Park

Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...

).