The recorded history of Brookrace dates back to the 18th century. The oldest records of the property reveal homes, a grist mill and an iron forge which belong to the Beach and McVicar families dating back as early as 1758. The land then changed hands and was divided into several smaller farms and a saw mill that stood at McVicar’s Brook. The farms were mainly sheep farms, supplying the wool for the Ralston Mills, just over the mountain to the west.
The area between Morristown and Bernardsville was originally known as Mine Mountain because of its mining operations. However, by the end of the 19th century it had acquired the name - Millionairs Mountain. The Pleasant Valley section of Mendham Township was the northwestern edge of this province of the rich. Wealthy merchants and professionals began to buy up the smaller farms in the area to assemble large country estates. The social life of Millionaires Mountain was centered around horsebreeding which grew quickly in the region.
In 1912, Col. Richard Williams amassed over 500 acres of land. He hired architect Ernest Flagg to design the “Manor House”. Completed in 1914, the house was constructed of native stone in a Colonial Revival design. Four years later another architectural firm, Mead, McKim and White was hired to design a ballroom for his daughter’s wedding. Brookrace Estate was designed for the lavish social life which lasted through the 1920’s on Millionaire’s Mountain.
By 1931 the Williamses suffered heavy financial losses and were forced to sell their land. The Williamses saw an advertisement in a local paper looking for land to become the national training center for the Boy Scouts of America. Brookrace Estate held all the necessary elements to train leaders for the Boy Scouts; areas to build cabins for the leadership conferences, plenty of space for field training, and McVicar’s brook which could be dammed to create a lake.
Contrary to local lore, what is now Brookrace was never the Schiff Estate. Mrs. Therese Schiff donated money to purchase the Williamses property as a memorial to her son, Mortimer Schiff, who was the President of the Boy Scouts of America. Here at Brookrace, the Boys Scouts got together to design the scouting program and forge a unity of purpose and practice. Many of the Scout manuals, as well as merit badge guidelines and Boys’ Life Magazine, were written here. Training films and other visual materials were produced in a large studio before it burned in the 1950’s. For decades, scouting thrived t the Schiff National Center.
In 1979 Ross Perot donated land and buildings in Irving, Texas to the combine the headquarters and training center of the Boy Scouts. AT&T purchased the Brookrace property for their own training facility The citizens of the Township rallied to prevent AT&T’s commercial use in a residential zone. A partnership was then formed between a California based conservation organization, a group of conservation minded neighbors (Schiff Natural Lands Trust) and a New York developer. In 1987, after years of planning, negotiating and compromising, an approval was granted for the Brookrace development. The plan called for 85 single family home sites and the preservation of over two thirds of the land as a conservation area. In 1994 Jackson Homes purchased Brookrace and completed the housing development.