Crawford Hill

Crawford Hill is located in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, United States. It is Monmouth County's highest point, as well as the highest point in New Jersey's coastal plain, standing above sea level. The hill is best known as the site of an annex to the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex. Crawford Hill is part of the cuesta known as the Atlantic highlands landform of New Jersey. In the past it was a wooded area overlooking the first farms in the area. It is named after one of the longstanding, prominent families of Holmdel, a name which goes back to an early figure in the area, William H. Crawford. Around 1900, part of Crawford Hill was leveled to make an easier through route for the Holmdel and Keyport Turnpike. Crawford Hill overlooks the Garden State Parkway; on the other side of that road is Telegraph Hill and the formerly named Garden State Arts Center. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs used the Holmdel Horn Antenna located on Crawford Hill to take measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation. They were awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for these efforts that supported the Big Bang theory. For more information, see Discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation.