Morris County has spent 250 years earning its reputation as the Crossroads of the Revolution, and residents and visitors can now explore that history at their own pace through a new interactive app launched as part of the county’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. The free STQRY app brings together self-guided walking and driving tours covering Morris County’s Revolutionary War story, with an interactive map, historical photographs, and optional audio narration built into every stop along the way.

How STQRY Actually Works

STQRY is an established, no-code tour building platform already used by museums, national parks, and universities around the world to create self-guided audio and walking experiences without requiring visitors to rent the kind of bulky audio wand devices that have long defined museum tours. Rather than juggling a paper map and a rented handset, visitors simply open the STQRY Guide app or scan a location’s posted QR code to pull up maps, audio clips, photographs, and historical narration directly on their own phone.

The technology behind that experience relies on GPS and geofencing, letting a tour automatically surface relevant audio or information as a visitor physically approaches a specific landmark or exhibit, rather than requiring them to manually search for the right stop. Tour content can also be downloaded in advance over Wi-Fi, letting the app continue functioning fully offline inside historic buildings or rural stretches of the county where cell service tends to run thin, a genuinely practical feature given how many of Morris County’s Revolutionary sites sit well outside dense, well covered downtown areas.

Two Ways to Walk Through Morristown’s Wartime Past

The two walking tours currently live on the app both center on Morristown, a town that served as George Washington’s strategic winter base for the Continental Army on two separate occasions during the war, first for five months beginning in January 1777, based out of Arnold’s Tavern on the Green, and again through the brutal winter of 1779 to 1780, when more than 10,000 soldiers camped at nearby Jockey Hollow through what remains one of the harshest winters on record. The Historic Morristown Walking Tour focuses specifically on sites tied to the town’s identity as the Military Capital of the American Revolution, while the broader Morristown Walking Tour and Beyond folds in additional downtown landmarks, museums, and historic sites for visitors looking to extend their walk past the core Revolutionary War stops.

Five Regional Driving Tours Cover the Whole County

Beyond Morristown itself, the app’s driving tours extend across five distinct regions of Morris County, giving visitors a genuine countywide view of the Revolution’s footprint rather than confining the experience to a single downtown.

Those five routes draw directly on research compiled through the Morris County Office of Planning and Preservation’s Morris County in the American Revolution StoryMap, a mapping project built to document and preserve the county’s Revolutionary era sites in detail. Joe Barilla, director of the Office of Planning and Preservation, described the app as a natural extension of that underlying research, giving residents and visitors an interactive, accessible way to actually experience the sites the StoryMap had already documented. The Morris County Tourism Bureau then built the self-guided driving experiences directly on top of that historical groundwork, translating years of preservation research into a format visitors can follow from behind the wheel.

A Resource Built to Outlast the Anniversary Year

The app arrives alongside a broader wave of 250th anniversary programming across Morris County this year, including free admission days and encampment reenactments at Morristown National Historical Park, home to Washington’s Headquarters at the Ford Mansion, Jockey Hollow, and Fort Nonsense, the hilltop redoubt Washington ordered built in 1777 specifically to protect the town and its military stores. Sarah Neibart, executive director of the Morris County 250th Anniversary Celebrations Committee, framed the app’s real value as extending well past this single commemorative year, describing it as a resource that will continue serving residents and visitors long after the 250th anniversary celebration itself concludes. Samantha Rutledge, director of Tourism and Strategic Partnerships for the Morris County Tourism Bureau, echoed that same long term framing, noting the app works equally well for first time visitors and lifelong residents looking to discover more about the county’s history, museums, downtowns, parks, and local businesses.

The project was developed with support from the Morris County Office of Planning and Preservation, the Morris County Tourism Bureau, the Morris County 250th Anniversary Celebrations Committee, and the Morris County Board of County Commissioners, with funding assistance from a grant through the New Jersey Highlands Council. Maryjude Haddock-Weiler, planning manager at the Highlands Council, said the organization takes real pride in supporting projects that connect people directly to the history, culture, and communities of the Highlands region, framing the app as a tool for strengthening heritage tourism across the broader area rather than a narrow, single county initiative. Organizers have said additional tours and experiences will continue being added to the STQRY platform over time, positioning the app as a growing heritage tourism resource well beyond its role in this year’s anniversary celebrations. The app is available free through Google Play or directly through STQRY’s web version, with more information on the county’s full slate of 250th anniversary programming available at MorrisCounty250.com.