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Three hundred million years ago, the area we now call Montclair was flat and swampy. In fact, archaeologists doing excavations have discovered fossils that show it was once under water and had tropical temperatures. Then the Ice Age came, which ended about eleven thousand years ago. During this very long period, the formation of the mountains and rocks took place. Some of the mountains formed were the Watchung Mountains, which you can see in Montclair.

When Henry Hudson landed in New Jersey in 1609, he came across the Lenni Lenape people. For hundreds of years, these people hunted through the Montclair area to and from the Jersey shores. They built longhouses. Several families lived together, and were the first community in this area. The Lenape who lived here were from the Unami tribe. The Lenape welcomed the people from Europe. In fact they shared their land and taught them how to live. The Lenape didn't do well after the Swedes, Dutch, and English bought their land. By 1758 there were only a few hundred left in New Jersey. The New Jersey Assembly in 1758 established a permanent home for the Lenni Lenape in Burlington County. It was the first Indian reservation in New Jersey and was one of the first in the country. It was called Brotherton, now called Indian Mills.

The Dutch, who came from a country called Holland, settled the land in and around present-day New Jersey and called it New Amsterdam. In 1664, the English took control of the territory and renamed it New York and New Jersey. In 1666, English settlers from Connecticut came to start a new community. Robert Treat, Abraham Pierson, and Jasper Crane led these Puritans from the New Haven Colony. They bought land and called it "New Ark" near the Passaic River. This land bought from the Lenape people included present-day Newark, Bloomfield, the Oranges, Belleville, Glen Ridge, & Montclair. The Crane Family was one of thirty families that founded this new settlement along the Watchung Mountains. The English families bought the land for "50 double hands of powder, 100 bars of lead, 20 axes, 23 coats, 10 guns, 20 pistols, 400 barrels of beer, 2 pairs of britches, 50 knives, 20 hoes, 850,000 fathoms of wampum, 2 ankers of liquor, 10 kettles, 10 swords, & 4 blankets."

When Jasper Crane died in 1681, two of his sons, Azariah and Jasper, Jr., were given land at the foot of the Watchung Mountains (Orange Mountains). In 1694, Azariah built the first house in the area that became known as Cranetown. His house

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