Before Northvale was named Northvale, before it was known as Carrieville, even before it was called Neuvy, the land was part of a c. 1640 purchase from the Tappan Tribe by a Dutch Captain to establish a trading post. Later in the same century, the site was incorporated into a royal land grant to the Haring family, who paid 16 bushels of wheat annually for the privilege. This Tappan grant continued until 1775, when a Colonial Commission ruling on state boundaries officially placed the land in the Harrington Township of New Jersey.

General Washington quartered his troops in this area at times, especially during the famous 1780 trial and execution of Major John Andre. In 1800, all of Northvale was part of a large plantation. Only with the 1859 advance of the Northern Railroad did this part of the state grow in population and industry. By 1866, Lucien Sanial filed a map of this town, calling it Carrieville and showing streets named Paris, Washington and Franklin. In 1875, a railroad depot marked the town as Neuvy, but by 1899, a map existed naming the town as Northvale. In 1916, the town was officially incorporated as the Borough of Northvale.

An organized collection of selected parts of the historical record, the "Collected Histories of the Borough of Northvale," is available for a small fee. It is recommended for students young and old.