Montclair is a township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the township population was 38,977. Montclair was first formed as a Township on April 15, 1868, from portions of Bloomfield Township. After a referendum held on February 21, 1894, Montclair was reincorporated as a Town, effective February 24, 1894. In the late 1970s, after protesting for years at the inequities built into the formulas, Montclair joined several other communities to qualify for a pool of federal aid allocated only to Townships, that allowed townships to receive as much as double the revenue-sharing aid per capita received by the four other types of New Jersey municipalities — Borough, City, Town or Village.