The Palisades Interstate Park was the ‘lungs of New York City'

Harriman - My mom sent me across the George Washington Bridge to summer camp way up in the woods. I pressed my face against the back of the bus window. Would I ever get back to New York City alive? Like millions of New York City kids I fell in love with my destination - the big park upstate with our camp fire story ogre, “the green swamp man” and Revolutionary War iron miners clanking at night. Deer mice ate our peanut butter. This was Harriman State Park, next to Bear Mountain. Which is maybe why the PIP was famously called the “lungs of New York City.” But even if all you know about this sprawling green belt - officially called the Palisades Interstate Park covering parts of New Jersey, and Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties in New York - is the Palisades Interstate Parkway, you’re going to get a nostalgic kick from this new, mostly archival picture book, a new book about how this bi-state open space was cobbled together way before “environmental” became a buzz word. This creation story begins with the turn-of-the-century nasty destruction of the 200 million-year-old palisades cliffs (the Lenni-lenape tribe, We-awken, called them rocks that look like trees) for New York City building materials and ships’ ballast. These quarries eventually were brought to heel by civic minded groups and bought out with the help of millionaires whose deep pockets are eternally linked to the bi-state park - the Harrimans, Rockefellers and Perkins families. Thanks to the Palisades Interstate Park Commission’s rich archives, the book is one “gee-I-never-knew-that” photograph or rendering after another. For example, did you know that Bear Mountain was once the queen of ski jumping? Its longest run, more than 1,200 feet, helped draw more than 500,000 winter visitors in the winter of 1928-1929. And the 2,255-foot Bear Mountain Bridge - officially part of the Appalachian Trail - was once the longest suspension span in the world. It bridges the Hudson nearly over the spot where George Washington’s troops strung a heavy chain across the river to keep at bay King George’s Royal Navy. After the park grew away from the river’s edge to include landmarks like the Palisades Interstate Parkway (fully open in 1958) and the famed Bear Mountain Inn (1915), it’s real estate expanded. The latest PIP park addition, 16,000-acre Sterling Forest in Orange, adds utter wilderness - boasting a rare cedar swamp. The car brought scores of fun seekers, but back in the day before the parkway or bridge, they arrived on the elegant Hudson River steamboats like the Alexander Hamilton (now rotting at a New Jersey Navy pier). The PIP is pretty much intact after all these years, but bigger. Still popular are the beaches, lakes, hiking trails, paddleboats on Hessian Lake near the Inn (being renovated), and the trailside museum systems’s iconic Bear Mountain Zoo (with, of course, real bears). Mountaintop sitters can still see forever. Just a an hour and change from the George Washington Bridge. Wayne A. Hall has written about the environment in the Hudson Valley for more than a quarter of a century. He can be reached via e-mail at scribewayne@aol.com. Essential information “New York’s Palisades Interstate Park” by Barbara H. Gottlock and Wesley Gottlock. Arcadia Publishing. $19.99. Available at area bookstores, on line books, or through Arcadia at www.arcadiapublishing.com or 888-313-2665.