River Vale is a township in Bergen County, New Jersey, and the easternmost municipality in the county's Pascack Valley region. It sits in the state's northeast corner, bordered on the east by Lake Tappan and on the north by Rockland County, New York, roughly thirty miles from Midtown Manhattan. The township's population was about 9,909 at the 2020 census, spread across just 4.3 square miles of largely residential land. The area's history predates its modern name. The Lenni Lenape, specifically the Hackensack and Tappan bands, lived and fished along these waterways, and Dutch and English settlers later used the Hackensack River "kill" as a landmark, calling the area "Over Kill" because it lay across the river from Tappan. River Vale was part of Harrington Township until the mid-nineteenth century, and it was the site of the 1778 Baylor Massacre, a Revolutionary War bayonet attack on Colonel George Baylor's Continental dragoons that remains a defining event in local history. Today River Vale is a quiet, well-regarded suburban community known informally as the Garden Spot. Its housing stock is overwhelmingly single-family, with colonial-style and spacious modern homes on landscaped lots, and the township deliberately preserves a low-density, residential character with few commercial districts of its own. Students attend River Vale Public Schools for grades K-8, at Roberge and Woodside elementary schools and Holdrum Middle School, then continue to Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale through the regional district. Three golf courses and a network of parks serve residents, and the township's location near the Garden State Parkway, the Palisades, and the New York state line has made it a durable favorite for families and commuters seeking Bergen County schools, space, and greenery within reach of New York City.