From the archive · since World War II
The Hackettstown Christmas Star
The Christmas Star on Buck Hill, above a Hackettstown train — the beacon still lit over the town it has watched since the Second World War.
Photograph by January O'Neill
Every December, a star lights up on Buck Hill, and for a few weeks it hangs over Hackettstown like a second moon.
The Hackettstown Christmas Star has shone from the hill since the years of the Second World War — long enough that, for most of the town, it has simply always been there. You catch it from the valley roads coming home after dark. People notice the night it first comes on, and they notice when it goes dark again after the holidays.
It isn’t the biggest landmark in Warren County, or the oldest. But ask anyone who grew up here what Christmas in Hackettstown looks like, and the star on the hill is somewhere in the answer — a small, steady light that has marked the season, and the way home, for generations.