Flowers for Aberdeen, NJ

Aberdeen Township is the piece of the Bayshore most senders think they already know and usually don't. It carried the name Matawan Township until 1977, it still wraps around Matawan Borough on three sides, and the two remain separate municipalities that share one ZIP. Aberdeen is really five settled pieces: Strathmore's postwar grid inland off Route 34, Freneau and Oakshades in the middle of the township, and Cliffwood and Cliffwood Beach dropping north to the Raritan Bay shoreline. The Aberdeen-Matawan station on the North Jersey Coast Line stands on the Aberdeen side of the line, and Matawan Regional High School sits here as well, on Atlantic Avenue, even though the district it serves is named for the borough.

That shared history shows up on the envelope. Most of Aberdeen mails as Matawan, NJ 07747, and Cliffwood and Cliffwood Beach mail as Cliffwood, NJ 07721, so a township address almost never says the word Aberdeen. Senders from out of town read that and assume the delivery is going to Matawan Borough; the driver then guesses between two street grids that both claim the same mailing city. The fix costs one line at checkout — name the section (Strathmore, Freneau, Oakshades, Cliffwood, Cliffwood Beach) along with the street. Cliffwood Beach in particular is its own trip: the blocks between the shoreline and Route 35 read nothing like Strathmore, and a driver who has only the 07747 mailing line will start in the wrong half of the township.

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