avoided further depredations by Midland Park and Glen Rock by incorporating as a village. The borough of Wood-Ridge was formed after the boundary lines were carefully drawn with an eye to the referendum, to exclude the home of a family of prominent landowners who were opposed to the incorporationthough not excluding their farmland. Once Wood-Ridge was successfully established, the farmhouse was annexed by borough ordinance. The secession of Wood-Ridge from Bergen Township, together with that of Carlstadt, Moonachie and Wallington, left Bergen Township with only a patch of low-lying swampland and 61 voters; the legislature in 1902 annexed it to Lodi Township. Of the 40 boroughs created in 1894 and 1895, 26 were in Bergen County. The ones elsewhere included Roselle and Mountainside, in Union County. In September 1894, state Senator Henry D. Winton warned that the legislature at its next session was likely to amend if not gut the Borough Act because of the craze in Bergen County. Nine new members had been added to the Board of Chosen Freeholders from the previous sixteen, Winton noted, with a proportionate increase in the cost of government, which would be further inflated by the multiplicity of boroughs. The signal that the law might change did not slow the incorporations: Wood-Ridge, Carlstadt, Edgewater, Old Tappan and other boroughs trace their geneses to late 1894. There were some fistfights and hard feelings over the borough formations, and Russell Jones, whose house was on the newly drawn line between Teaneck and Bogota, saw it burn down as firefighters argued about who had jurisdiction. Aftermath and legacy The wave of incorporations continued into 1895, with Cliffside Park gaining borough status in January. That month, Bergen County's school superintendent, John Terhune, wrote a report to Trenton, decrying that the law allowed borough petitioners to set the proposed lines to exclude opponents of incorporation, "The idea of allowing a bare majority the power to accept or reject a few that have dared to oppose the new fad, and for this simple expression of their rights to cut them from all school facilities is radically wrong and gross injustice. There is no defense for the injured, but they must meekly accept the situation. It is inconsistent with liberty, a term so dear to us all". Superintendent Terhune wrote that "until the boroughing is done", it would not be possible to assess the many problems that the rapid subdivision