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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
US 1, designed to speed the heavy traffic flow between New York and
Philadelphia, avoids most urban congestion by by-passing every city. Because the road runs for miles without a turn and is the most heavily traveled State highway, many New Jersey residents avoid it. They choose the
alternate route, State 27 (see Tour 8), between Elizabeth and Trenton,
which offers scenery and historic landmarks not found along US 1. Motorists who wish to test their skill on a modern highway should follow US 1.
State police carefully patrol the route.
South of the George Washington Bridge, where the New York-New
Jersey State Line is crossed, US 1 twists through a maze of underpasses
and overpasses until it straightens out for a gradual descent along the
western slope of the Palisades. Metropolitan residential and industrial development has claimed all of the land here, except for the marshy lowlands of Overpeck Creek. Westward are clusters of commuters' towns, and
in the distance the hazy outline of the Ramapo Mountains. From Jersey
City the road sweeps upward to Pulaski Skyway, giving a panorama of the
New York hinterland, a region of smokestacks and marshes, of a few skyscrapers and many tenements, of patterns in steel rails and confusion in
garbage dumps. Between Newark and Linden the industrial area thins
out; southward the highway traverses New Jersey countryside, with farms,
woodland, nurseries, and only an occasional factory until the outlying part
of Trenton is reached. Hills are rare, and there is little in the landscape
to divert the driver's attention from the long, straight path of concrete
lying ahead.
US 1 crosses the New Jersey Line, 0 miles, on GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE (toll 50¢ for car and drive, pd. at Jersey end), 9.2 miles northwest of mid-town Manhattan (New York City).
The bridge, completed in 1931, is a dramatic gateway to New Jersey.
Its steel towers rise 630 feet above the Hudson River and its main span
is 3,500 feet long. The towers are twice the height of the Palisades at this
point though the fact is not apparent to those on the structure. Four cables, each 47 inches in diameter and containing 26,474 wires, provide
BRIDGE (toll 500 for car and driver, pd. at Jersey end), 9.2 in. northwest
strength enough to support the present deck and another that can be
added. The bridge cost $57,000,000 and 14 lives.
From the roadway, 250 feet above the river at the center, the view
southward includes the tallest buildings of Manhattan, the high-perched
tower of RIVERSIDE CHURCH at 122nd St., the unbroken line of apartment
houses along Riverside Dr., the North River berths of the largest ocean
liners, and the busy ferry traffic between the New York and New Jersey
terminals. Northward is the path of summer excursion boats to Bear Mt.,
and of freight and passenger vessels between New York and Albany.
Straight ahead, partly hidden by foliage in summer, is the sheer face of
the PALISADES. This barricade of rock, given the form of columns when
the molten mass cooled, shrank, and cracked beneath the earth's surface,
was covered ages past by a layer of sediment several thousand feet deep,
which was gradually worn away. Excavations for the New Jersey bridge
approach revealed the tracks of dinosaurs in the Triassic rock.
At the end of the bridge approach in Jersey is a junction with US 9W
(see Tour 3).
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