Photo of the Day: Elmwood Park Marina, Elmwood Park, NJ

I took the image accompanying this post around noontime a few days ago while I was in Elmwood Park, on the western boundary of Bergen County, NJ.

From what I gather from online reviews, I found the marina, bordering on the Passaic River, in a characteristic moment: quiet, peaceful, with an occasional fisherman and far more ducks lining the shore.

The main use of the site, of course, is as a launch point for kayaks and canoes. Picnic tables and swings are here for family use, and, for the likes of solitary passersby like myself, it’s simply a nice place to pull over off River Drive, gather one’s thoughts and reflect on a lovely day.

Quote of the Day (Michael Wood, on Destroying Rivers and the Past)

“The health of our rivers is vital to everyone. If you love history, it is even more pointed, for in our landscapes are carried all our histories. Destroy a river and you also lose its past; it is akin to losing part of our collective memory. We live in times of the degradation of landscapes across the world, caused by poverty but also by the deliberate actions of the rich and powerful. And in Britain these disasters threaten not only our environment and our physical and mental wellbeing but our history, too.”— English historian, broadcaster, and documentary filmmaker Michael Wood, “Michael Wood on…The History Carried in Our Landscapes,” BBC History Magazine, April 2023

Professor Wood’s article deals with rivers in Great Britain. But these waterways—from the Hudson and Potomac in the east, through the Mississippi and Missouri in the heartland, to the Columbia in the West—have been crucial not only to American commerce but also American culture.

The Passaic River in northern New Jersey might not be as famous as these, but it has been as important to those lining its shores. This waterway has been essential to commerce in the area, but also shamefully abused, even listed in 1970 as the second most polluted river in the United States.

In September 2013 I took the image accompanying this post, of a revived tract of land on its banks: Riverfront Park in Garfield.

The creation of Riverfront Park shows what can be done with great effort in a concentrated area. Much remains to be done elsewhere along this 80-mile-long river to ensure the health of residents in the area—and the maintenance of historical memory of how the waterway helped give birth to America’s manufacturing industry.

In addition, the stream forms the backdrop to William Carlos Williams’ poem Paterson, which, the doctor-turned-writer noted, “follows the course of the Passaic River, whose life seemed more and more to resemble my own: the river above the Falls, the catastrophe of the Falls itself, the river below the Falls and the entrance at the end into the great sea."

Photos of the Day: Riverside County Park, Lyndhurst-North Arlington NJ

I took these photos last Saturday afternoon, when I drove 30 minutes from my home in Bergen County, NJ, down to Riverside County Park.

The picture I posted about then was of the Bergen County Rowing Center. But it struck me that another suitable subject was how the bare trees adjoining the Passaic River in one photo contrasted considerably with the broad, open track in the other photo.

(Thanks to my friend Emil for the photo advice.)

Photo of the Day: Bergen County Rowing Center, Riverside County Park, Lyndhurst-North Arlington NJ

This afternoon I took a 30-minute drive from my home in Bergen County, NJ, down to Riverside County Park.

Like another county park near me, Overpeck, this one is located near a body of water—in this case, the Passaic River.

Since 2003, the Bergen County Department of Parks has joined with the Passaic River Rowing Association (PRRA) to offer community rowing programs to the general public.

On my visit, I took this photo of the Bergen County Rowing Center. The two-story, 14,285-square-foot facility, designed by Clarke Caton Hintz Architects and Peterson Architects, was completed this past September, at a cost of in 2022 $7 million. It replaced a one-story 2,600 sq. ft. structure used as a makeshift boat storage facility.

The expanded facility should provide more efficient and increased boat storage, as well as improved instructional and community spaces, while expanding recreational access to the Passaic River.

Photo of the Day: Passaic River Boat Parade

You can tell that this wasn’t a recent photo because of the short-sleeved shirts. It’s hard to believe that two months have passed since I attended a boat parade on the Passaic River organized by Saddle Brook, NJ resident Rick Rodriguez. So much seemed to be going on in my life that I wondered if I would ever have the time to write about this event.

But better late than never, and the work that this recreational activity springs from—the clean-up of this river—is both ongoing and urgently needed for anyone who cares about the quality of life in Northern New Jersey.

Mr. Rodriguez—or, as he is nicknamed, “River Man”—has striven over time to remove trash and debris from the waterway. The event he organized on a Saturday afternoon early this fall aimed at changing how people see the Passaic River—an unfortunate industrial dump to some, but to him a “splendiferous lady,” to quote a phrase of his in an article on his quest in The Bergen Record back then.

Too bad that industry isn’t stopping up, imaginatively and aggressively, to purify the river the way Mr. Rodriguez has. Instead, as Scott Fallon points out in an article from The Record this past weekend, a group of 70 companies are seeking to extricate themselves from footing the bill for the most expensive toxic cleanup in New Jersey history by trading contaminated fish pulled from the river for cleaned ones.

Their “plan” is to clean up “hot spots” in the river rather than the wider expanse that the Environmental Protection Agency is advocating. Go on and believe this, if you wish. But, with a number of these companies among the firms originally responsible for polluting the river in the first place, it all sounds like a fishy tale to me.

Photo of the Day: Wall of Water

I took this photograph of the falls on the Passaic River from Riverfront Park in Garfield, NJ, over a week and a half ago.

Photo of the Day: A Man, a Rod, and a River

The image accompanying this post was one of the more dramatic photos I took last week of the Passaic River, which I described the other day in my piece on Riverfront Park in Garfield, NJ.

Photo of the Day: A Riverfront Walk in Garfield NJ

It had been nearly 25 years since I had worked in Garfield, NJ, and almost as long as I had driven through it. Recently, in my desire to photograph places of interest for this blog, I thought of a park not far from where I worked in this onetime textile manufacturing center, and I wondered how things had fared since.

Last weekend, then, I drove from the eastern part of Bergen County, where I live, to this city at the edge of the county. In researching Garfield’s parks on the Web, the one that struck my eye was not so much the site I had recalled, but a riverfront area I had not recalled at all. In addition, I wondered how time had affected this community.

As I drove around on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, my reaction was mixed. The Garfield of my memory was a proud blue-collar community. One of the benefits of working in such a place was the amount of good, inexpensive eateries—and sure enough, Santoni’s, a pizzeria on Outwater Lane, remained, just as it had when my co-workers and I used to go out for lunch.

Yet in other ways, the town is facing stiff challenges. My former employer closed down 15 years ago. More surprising, the once-bustling supermarket across the street had also closed. I saw similar signs as I drove around. One of the signs welcoming visitors to town says that it’s the home of athletes Luis Castillo, Miles Austin and Wayne Chrebet. But I couldn’t help wondering if the city couldn’t want more for itself and its young than just proclaiming itself the youthful home of NFL stars.

There was something else I had remembered reading: Several years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency declared the neighborhood surrounding an abandoned factory a Superfund site, which had been exposing residents to heightened levels of chromium. As many as one-tenth of the city’s homes might be at risk.  It was the downside of the Bruce Springsteen song, “Factory”—a place that can take one’s life and spirit.

The people of this town could sure use a break, I thought as I exited off Route 80 and turned onto River Road.

And then, as I looked to my right and saw the Passaic River, I thought I saw the beginning of that break.

Riverfront Park shows how a community can be served when one of its best assets—a waterway and its surrounding environment—is protected. A $5.7 million construction project, with federal and state funding, now includes open park space with brick-lined walking paths and bike trails. You can see some of the results in the first photo I’ve used in this space.

But even better is the fact that the park allows now for greater appreciation of the Passaic River. It will take decades of clean-up, vigilant watching—and yes, money—to fully mitigate an even longer period of mindless industrial damage. But this mile-long stretch of an 80-mile river shows what can be done, in a concentrated way.

I can only wish that Garfield residents will experience the same good feeling I had on the day I visited. If anyone needs it, and deserves it, as they try to recover from the recession, it’s the people of this beleaguered but tough blue-collar city by the Passaic River.

Photo of the Day: Revolutionary Marker in Garfield, NJ

In the midst of one of the greatest crises in American history, a public school in Bergen County, NJ, created a remembrance of another. I took the photo of this marker while walking, on a brilliantly beautiful late-summer afternoon, this weekend in Garfield, on River Road never Columbus Avenue. I found interesting, but all too short, the inscription for Ford Post: “frequently used by both armies during Revolutionary War.”

Subsequently, I confirmed on the Web what I suspected: that the British had pursued the outnumbered, desperate Continental Army across the Passaic River in November 1776. What I hadn’t expected, though, was even more interesting.

According to Howard D. Lanza’s Garfield (2002), public school principal Francis Fuscaldo decided in 1935 to involve his students in a project to commemorate the history that occurred here. The design for the marker was created by Fuscaldo himself, then executed by local artist John Poltorak. The children themselves, however, collected enough pennies to mark the nine-foot-high memorial, whose stones were gathered from the riverbank.  

In the midst of the Great Depression, the drive showed what could be done through individual small sacrifices culminating in a large collective action. It was a lesson the schoolchildren and their families would apply in the next two decades, as many would serve halfway around the world, braving bullets in an attempt to extend abroad the freedom hard-won at home, in places such as the Passaic River.