Eric Nelsen a historical interpreter for the Palisades Interstate Park in New Jersey.
I LIKE TO describe the Palisades as this area’s least-known well-known landscape. It is a landscape seen
by millions every day as they go about their lives in Manhattan, the Bronx, Yonkers and Westchester
County. Each of the thousands of drivers and passengers who daily cross into New Jersey on the George
Washington Bridge gets a grandstand view of its miles of undulating cliff face, rising from dense forests
at the river’s edge.
Yet almost every day at the Palisades Interstate Park in New Jersey, we’ll hear someone exclaim, “You
know, I’ve lived right by this place for years now, and I never knew it existed!”
How did this landscape, set in one of the great metropolitan areas of the world, so plainly visible to so
many millions each day, manage to escape development? How did it become a park, one that hides in
plain sight?
The answer is people made it so. And it is a great American story.
It starts in the 1890s, when several big quarry operations, which produced gravel for roadbeds and other
projects, started using dynamite to tear into the ancient cliffs of the Palisades. For the quarrymen, it
was just good business sense. The economic engine of the country needed gravel. Here was a seemingly
endless supply of the stuff, just waiting to be blasted down to the river’s edge. From there it could be
ground up smaller and loaded onto barges, with no need for expensive overland transport.
Still, quarrying was hard work, and dangerous. You can picture the quarry owners rolling their eyes
when they first heard that people across the river were starting to complain their view was being
spoiled. For the quarrymen, remember, it was just stone.
But for a great many others, there was something else involved, something hard to define. There was
the beauty of the landscape, of course, the tall cliffs as backdrop to the great and growing metropolis.
But there was also history, the story of the beginnings of a nation still young, but in danger of forgetting
where it came from.
There were secrets in that landscape.
There was Henry Hudson sailing up the unknown river in 1609, natives paddling out to him in dugout
canoes — how he must have gazed up at those dark cliffs and wondered what lay beyond them. There
was the great crucible of the Revolution, so much of which played out right here. (There was a night in
1776 when an English Army of 5,000 men scaled those very cliffs to attack a fort the Americans had
named “Lee” — that’s when the words began to form in Tom Paine’s head: These are the times that try
men’s souls…)
*In the shadows of the cliffs*
A generation later, Robert Fulton tested out his North River Steamboat of Clermont in the shadow of
these cliffs. In the decades since, steamboats had grown, till they could transport hundreds of
passengers at a time. By the time of the quarries, river travelers still delighted in showing their children
landmarks remembered from their own childhoods. In the Palisades Cliffs, for example, there were
faces: “Look — it’s the old Indian Profile! And can you see George Washington’s profile, too!”
In well-appointed houses in Washington Heights and Riverdale, window panes and china cupboards
rattled as dynamite toppled pillars of rock across the river. It was in these stately homes that opposition
to the “vandalism” of the quarrymen first appeared. But in time it would be felt by working people, too.
There was a sense that something was being taken, something that rightly belonged to everyone, not
just the few.
The quarrymen went ahead and blasted down the old Indian Profile. Then they blasted down George
Washington’s profile, too. (It was just stone, remember.)
The equation changed when the opponents of the quarries finally found an ally on the New Jersey side
of the river. That ally was the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs. Women across the nation
were fighting for the right to vote. In order to prove to the world that women had a role to play in the
political life of the nation, women’s clubs organized around certain goals. In New Jersey, it became
saving the Palisades.
*Buying out the quarries*
The nation’s politicians were men, of course. But they had wives. By 1900 a majority of legislators in
both New York and New Jersey had been persuaded to pass bills permitting each state to join with the
other in an interstate commission to buy out the quarries and preserve 12 miles of the Palisades
riverfront and cliff face, from Fort Lee to the New York state line.
The two governors signed the legislation. (In New York, that governor was Theodore Roosevelt, only a
year or so away from his presidency — and his legacy of national parks.) The states raised funds for the
project, but not nearly enough. The balance came from individuals. One of these was J.P. Morgan, who
donated a small fortune to buy out the largest of the Palisades quarries.
From the start the new commission saw this land not just as scenic and historic, but as a place for
healthful recreation. Beaches and campgrounds were opened, boat basins built. The commission set out
to acquire properties along the western shore of the Hudson in New York State, too, including the
famous Bear Mountain Park. One writer described this new interstate park system as “the lungs of New
York”; another wrote a short book about the Interstate Park he titled, “The Greatest Park in the World.”
It was not meant ironically: he explained that while the new national parks might offer more spectacular
scenery, there were no parks — anywhere — that offered so much benefit to so many. Millions could
afford to take advantage of this park’s acres of green hills and blue water.
Or just gaze across the river at a soothing view from their apartment window.
*Picnics, hikes and bicycling*
The park’s Hudson River beaches closed during World War II. But many thousands still come to the park
to picnic, to hike, to cycle, to paddle or to jet-ski, or to learn about history or nature in an educational
program. (Or just to ask us how they could have lived here all these years and never knew the place
existed.)
The suburban communities immediately west of the cliffs, meanwhile, have thrived. They contain some
of the most desirable real estate in the nation. They boast excellent schools and beautiful streetscapes.
Corporate headquarters, too, have been built, some of them not a quarter mile from the edge of the
cliffs. But all of them have so far been built as low-rise structures, invisible to the millions who look at
the Palisades each day. It has been a great American success story, prosperity alongside scenic and
historic preservation.
Without knowing some of this story, it might be hard to understand the opposition that has sprung up
over the proposal by the electronics giant LG to build a high-rise office tower in Englewood Cliffs. When
one realizes that in 1965, almost half a century ago, Congress declared the park a National Historic
Landmark — and in 1983 the Palisades themselves a National Natural Landmark — then it makes sense
that the National Park Service has weighed in against the high-rise design, and that the commissioners
of the Palisades Interstate Park have voted unanimously to ask LG to consider a low-rise alternative, to
honor a century of tradition.
Knowing the story helps explain why the New Jersey Women’s Clubs have joined a lawsuit to try to get
LG to agree to a low-rise design.
It may be a tribute to all those men and women who fought so hard to preserve it that the landscape
across the Hudson has become so quietly familiar to so many, that they do not wonder if it might have
been different. But as Joni Mitchell famously sang, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know
what you’ve got till it’s gone.”