NY to NJ on foot
George Washington Bridge. Bronx. Cabrini Boulevard. Washington Heights. 175th Street, Manhattan, NYC. Interstate 95 or I-95, the main interstate highway of the east coast. New York State Route Highway 9A. US Route 9. US Route 1. Fort Lee, New Jersey. Palisades Interstate Park, New Jersey. White blazes.
Concrete jungles where dreams are made of
There’s nothing you can’t do
Now you’re in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
The song “Empire State of Mind” admittedly typical “New York hip-hop shit” by its writers resonates again as I hike my second bridge for the family East Coast visit. I’ve had enough of the tourist crowd of the iconic Brooklyn Bridge and finding the bike path that would get me to New Jersey on foot got me deeper into this Jay Z-popularized hip-hop shit.
If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere, that’s what they say.
AllTrails rates the 1.6 mile George Washington Bridge hike easy. The unbroken view of the New Jersey shoreline is better than any of the pictures I have seen posted at https://www.alltrails.com/. The bridge that was named after the military general, founding father and first president of thr United States is the west end of NYC's 175th Street and a portion of I-95, the main interstate highway of the East Coast. To the south of the foot of the bridge is the Fort Lee Historic Park and to the north is Palisades Interstate Park. Yep, I was feeling totally cool hiking to New Jersey from New York. 
Fort Lee Historic Park is originally named Fort Constitution. The 33-acre landscaped area sitting atop a bluff of the Hudson Palisades was eventually named after the Continental Army general by the name of Charles Henry Lee who defended NYC against British forces during the American Revolution in 1776. Born in England, General Lee served in the Seven Years' War under the British Army then sold his commisson and served for a time in the Polish Army. When Lee came to North America, he became an tribesman by marriage to a Mohawk woman and was given a name that translates to "Boiling Water". General Lee have also been noted as General George
Washington's bitter enemy and a traitor to the Continental Army.
In the opposite direction accross the Hudson River in what is now the Washington Heights area was Fort Washington. The idea was for two canons on the opposite sides of the river firing on the enemy sailing up the river. Fort Lee, of course was atop a bluff while Fort Washington was on a lower elevation which seem to be directly on the trajectory of a canon fire from Fort Lee. The British forces won over the Continental Army on and in the end the British-born General Charles Lee for which Fort Lee was named after was captured by the British forces. George Washington retreated to avoid capture from British forces using a retreat route near Fort Lee.
The Palisades Interstate Park in New Jersey is part of more than 100,000 acres of parks and historic sites that the Palisades Interstate Park Commission manages. The stiff cliffs along the west side of Hudson River in Northeastern New Jersey was a quarry site for rocks to make gravel and concrete until a fight to preserve the cliffs was initiated by the Federation of Women's Clubs of New Jersey. The interstate commission was formed in 1900 and the park was formally dedicated in 1909.
The park maintains at least seven interconnecting trails. The Long Path Trail which is blazed with aqua colored rectangular markers starts right on the north side of George Washington Bridge that is also the west bound side of I-95. The 424-mile trail ends at Thacher State Park near Albany, New York.
The Long Path Trail along with white blaze-marked Shore Trail are part of the National Recreation Trails system. It is easy to get excited over white blaze markers if you're also aspiring to hike portions of Appalachian Trail that also use white blaze markers. The Shore Trail is an easy 5.7 mile heavily trafficked loop that starts at the south end of Henry Hudson Drive and goes northward passing under the George Washington Bridge.
The diabase basalt forming the Palisades Cliffs are also called "trapp rock" or "stepped rock" by Dutch settlers in 1600's. Gigantic chunks of these were broken into smaller pieces large-scale quarries who operated along the Hudson River. The most notorious of these quarry operations were that of Carpenter Brothers. The Carpenter Trail which is also known to locals as the "Thousand Stairs" connects the Shore Trail into the Long Path Trail.
The first known inhabitants of the area were the Lenni Lenape indigenous tribes. They were later labelled as "Delaware Indians" after an English lord by the name of De La Warr. The Palisade Cliffs were known as Wee-awk-en meaning "rocks that look like trees". The highest point along the Palisades ridgeline is 832 feet above sea level.
Geologists place the Palisades Cliffs to be about 200 million years old. At the end Triassic Period, the supercontinent of Pangaea broke apart and molten diabase forced its way out by way of volcanic activities. As the molten diabase cooled and hardened, it formed into sill. In geology, sill are flat intusion of igneous rocks that forms in between preexisting layers of rock. Over the millions of years of
climate changes, as the softer rocks got eroded, portions of the sill became the vertical walls that characterize the Palisades Ridgeline of today.
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