Palisades Interstate Park — New Jersey
Alpine Landing: The Park Opens—and Soldiers Depart
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
This river landing witnessed two very different kinds of departure.
In 1909, governors and officials gathered here to dedicate the new Palisades Interstate Park.
A decade later, soldiers passed through on their way to war.
The 1909 dedication mattered because the park commission had moved beyond an emergency campaign against quarrying.
Land had been acquired.
Public access was being organized.
The Palisades were becoming a permanent regional park rather than a temporary political cause.
The Kearney House nearby looked out on that ceremony.
Then the First World War transformed the area.
Camp Merritt, a huge military embarkation camp in Bergen County, processed troops moving toward the ports of New York.
Park historians note that large numbers of soldiers travelled down Closter Dock Road to ferries here at Alpine Landing.
They crossed the Hudson as part of the journey toward troopships and Europe.
That history changes the emotional scale of an ordinary picnic area.
A family eating beside the river today occupies a landscape where young Americans once waited to leave the country during a war whose outcome and personal consequences were uncertain.
The Palisades were a scenic backdrop to a military logistics system.
This is another recurring theme in the park:
Landscapes do not have only one meaning at a time.
A landing can be commercial infrastructure, a park entrance, a ferry terminal and a wartime route.
If you are local, imagine the geography before highways.
The cliff top and the river were separated by steep roads.
Crossing the Hudson by ferry remained part of regional movement.
The modern park preserved those old routes even after their economic purpose faded.
That is why history survives here in paths and grades as much as in buildings.