The village of Mullica Hill stands on a small rise above Raccoon Creek in Gloucester County, New Jersey. The town takes its name from the Mullica family, Finnish-Swedish colonists who immigrated to the seventeenth-century New Sweden colony on the Delaware. Brothers named Eric, John, and William Mullica began acquiring land in this area in the early 1700s, and two of the houses they built still stand on North Main Street near the creek.
English and Irish Quakers established farms here in the late seventeenth century. The Friends Meeting House on this tour stands on land Jacob Spicer set aside in his 1779 will for a Quaker meeting house, a schoolhouse, and a burying ground. By the time of the American Revolution, the place was a coaching village: two scattered clusters of houses split by Raccoon Creek, two taverns, and a grist mill. Six of those eighteenth-century structures still stand today: the Spicer House, the Eagle Tavern, the Ellis House, the Pancoast House, and the two Mullica Houses on North Main Street.
The first real growth came between 1780 and 1830. Commercial development concentrated along what is now South Main Street, where five of the town's first churches went up. The north side stayed mostly agricultural.
A second period of growth followed the Civil War. The Old Town Hall went up in 1871 with stock sold at five dollars a share. The Gaunt House and dozens of Victorian homes were built in the same decades. The South Glassboro to Mullica Hill rail spur was completed in 1888, and very quickly the village became one of the most active produce shipping points on the eastern seaboard. For more than half a century, asparagus, white and sweet potatoes, corn, and tomatoes moved out of the warehouse at the center of the village on schedules that beat the farmers' wagons by days.
Through the twentieth century the village served as the seat of government for Harrison Township and as the principal commercial street for surrounding farms. Agriculture remains an important local industry. The Main Street businesses have shifted from servicing farms to serving visitors from across the eastern seaboard, with antique shops, boutiques, restaurants, and galleries arrayed along South and North Main Street.
In 1991, the entire village was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and the New Jersey State Register of Historic Places in recognition of its historic and architectural significance. The following year, Harrison Township established the village as a local historic district. The five buildings on this walking tour are among the ones the listing protects.