Byram is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

within Kingwood Township in

Hunterdon County Hunterdon County is a County (United States), county located in the western section of the U.S. state of New Jersey. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the county was the state's List of counties in New Jersey, 4th-least populous ...

, in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

. In 1855 a bridge was built across the

Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and is the longest free-flowing (undammed) river in the Eastern United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock, New York, the river flows for a ...

north of Byram to connect with Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania. The Point Pleasant-Byram Bridge existed until 1955 when it was destroyed by the Great Flood of 1955 brought on by

Hurricane Diane Hurricane Diane was the first Atlantic hurricane to cause more than an estimated $1 billion in damage (in 1955 dollars, which would be $11,764,962,686 today), including direct costs and the loss of business and personal revenue. It tropical ...

.DiGiovanni, Nicholas
"Back-to-back storms in 1955 unleashed havoc along Delaware River"

NJ.com NJ.com is a digital news content provider and website in New Jersey owned by Advance Publications. According to ''The New York Times'' in 2012, it was the largest provider of digital news in the state at the time. In 2018, comScore reports that ...

, August 11, 2015. Accessed July 8, 2016. "Further down the river, the Byram-Point Pleasant bridge was swept away by the flood. Its remains are still visible in the river." Byram also once had a railroad station along Pennsylvania Railroad's Belvidere Division which opened back in 1852 when the railroad reached Byram. The station was also destroyed in the Great Flood of 1955 and was never rebuilt. The railroad continued to be used for freight until 1978 when it was abandoned and subsequently demolished for a recreational trail in the early 1980s.

References

Kingwood Township, New Jersey Unincorporated communities in Hunterdon County, New Jersey Unincorporated communities in New Jersey {{HunterdonCountyNJ-geo-stub