NMHA History
NMHA's history dates back to 1999 when volunteer members of the Monmouth Boat Club organized a family and community boat building event in Red Bank during the RiverFest weekend.
More about the planning, source materials, and early history is in this essay by Charles Ladoulis.
This event was quite a success and it was immediately apparent that events of this type would result in greater appreciation of the Navesink River and the local river heritage. Most of all it was discovered that wooden boatbuilding did not only provide for a fun and fullfilling recreational event, but also that the activities associated with boatbuilding, restoration and river exploration provided a very powerful setting for training in teamwork, environmental appreciation, hands on skills and planning.
This resulted in the formation of the Navesink Martime Heritage Association (NMHA). Intitially NMHA was an informal association that ran a variety of informal programs that included lectures, boatbuilding classes, a wooden boat rendezvous and river exploration excursions. Once it became apparent that there were significant community benefits from NMHA's activities, NMHA became a 501(c) 3 charitable organization and has become an important facilitator of boatbuilding, restoration, river education and community outreach programs.
Today NMHA runs a wide variety of programs, alone, or in partnership with many other organizations, and this website provides a sampling of the type of programs that NMHA is involved in.
The organization is run by a unpaid volunteer board of trustees and depends on interested volunteers, partner organizations, and its members for support in the programs it organizes, and draws in participants from the public at large, local schools and community organizations. NMHA would like you to become a Member or make as Donation to help us continue and expand our programs.
Day to day, NMHA continues to promote community spirit, improvements in educational methods and plain river fun.