Lenape refers to the Native Americans who occupied the region; the names "Rahway" and "Nomahegan" are derivative of their language.
[8] Two tusks (one measuring 4 feet, 3 inches) and several bone fragments from an ancient American mastodon were found in June and August 1936 north of Kenilworth Blvd in what is now Lenape Park (other sources name the swampy area directly behind what is now the parking lot of Union County College's main building).
[10][11] The bones discovered are believed to have belonged to a young male that lived 12,000 years ago and probably washed down from farther north.
The park was redesigned by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to respond to requests from neighboring communities to ease the cyclical flooding of the Rahway River to parts of Cranford, Westfield and others.
[14][15] In 2011, studies began to fortify the levee system;[16] a construction worker was killed during a roll-over of his trail-smoothing equipment.