Corzine visits the Bridge That Saved A Nation
Governor Jon Corzine and Senator Loretta Weinberg met with officers of the Historic New Bridge Landing Park Commission and the president of the Bergen County Historical Society at the Campbell-Christie House on Main Street, River Edge, on March 19th. NJDEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson attended the hour-long discussion, which focused on plans to preserve and promote this Revolutionary War battleground. An important topic of discussion was the commission’s resolution, passed at their February meeting, which seeks to transfer administrative control of all state lands and buildings at Historic New Bridge Landing to the Historic New Bridge Landing Park Commission, together with a line-item budget appropriation sufficient to administer and operate the historic park. To accomplish this, Senator Weinberg will introduce legislation reallocating any State funds appropriated to the NJDEP Division of Parks and Forestry for, or related to, the administration of the Steuben House or Historic New Bridge Landing State Park to the HNBLP Commission. She will seek cosponsors from the rest of the Bergen County legislators. In February, the Bergen County Freeholders expressed their support for the plans and actions of the Historic New Bridge Landing Park Commission in a resolution addressed to the Governor and state legislators.
Pictured here are HNBL Commission officers Mary Donohue, Jim Bellis, Senator Loretta Weinberg, Kevin Wright, Chairman Mike Trepicchio and Governor Jon Corizine. Photo by Deborah Powell, BCHS President. The Historic New Bridge Landing Park Commission, established by legislation in 1995, includes representatives of the Bergen County Historical Society, the Blauvelt-Demarest Foundation, the County of Bergen, the municipalities of River Edge, Teaneck and New Milford, and the Director of the NJ Division of Parks and Forestry. The present officers, who met with the Governor and Senator Weinberg, are chairman Michael Trepicchio, vice-chairwoman Mary Donohue, secretary Kevin Wright and treasurer James Bellis. Deborah Powell, of River Edge, is President of the Bergen County Historical Society.
Although purchase of the former Pizza Town and auto-parts yard at the intersection of Hackensack Avenue and Main Street has greatly expanded the historic park, providing room for a proposed museum, visitors center and battle monument, flooding in April 2007 damaged the Bergen County Historical Society’s collection of Jersey Dutch artifacts and furnishings, displayed in the state-owned and staffed Steuben House, which remains closed. The collections are now safely stored elsewhere, through the generous cooperation of the County of Bergen, one of the partners at HNBL. The adjacent Campbell-Christie House, relocated from New Milford and restored as an 18th century tavern, and the Demarest House, the best surviving example of a so-called Flemish farmhouse, are open for special events, together with an operating Out Kitchen.
New Bridge is best remembered for the retreat of the ragged American garrison of Fort Lee in November 1776, when, in the darkest hour of the war, Washington led his troops to safety in the face of a British invasion. Eye-witness Thomas Paine immortalized “the bridge over the Hackensack, which laid up the river between the enemy and us,” in his famous essay The American Crisis, beginning with the unforgettable phrase, “These are the times that try men's souls.” Throughout the long war, the opposing armies and local militia repeatedly occupied, fortified and contested this strategic bridge at the narrows of the Hackensack River. General Washington also made his headquarters at New Bridge in September 1780, when 14,000 Continental solders encamped on the Kinderkamack ridge between Van Saun Park and Soldiers Hill in Oradell.
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