New Jersey Mansions, Englewood Cliffs - Now Forest Floor > 근교여행

LIKE some long-lost jungle temple, the former bathhouse at Undercliff Beach in New Jersey’s stretch of Palisades Interstate Park has succumbed to vines. They linger on derelict staircases, shroud windows and veil the stone-walled ruin. The floorboards rotted away years ago, and cracks in the mortar have multiplied like spider webs in an abandoned barn.

 

The hundreds of thousands of vacationers who packed Undercliff Beach 80 years ago, most of them New Yorkers ferried across the Hudson from Manhattan, would probably be shocked by this decay. Surprised, too, would be those residents of the city who owned the sprawling second homes high above, atop the cliffs where the hulks of once-grand mansions are now just planters for oak trees.

 

But for today’s New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, especially those who like to hike, the Palisades’ resort-to-forest transformation has been a good thing.

 

It has resulted in terrain that has a range of pleasant and not-too-strenuous hikes across a roughly 11-mile-long swath, and whose sharp ridges sometimes soar 52 stories above the river below. And the trails can be reached by a short bus ride from Manhattan.

 

This season seems to be best to explore the Palisades. Compared with the height of summer, when I first visited, the paths late last month were quiet, almost empty, especially the Shore Trail next to the Hudson.

 

The Palisades may not jump and shimmy with color in late fall the way Vermont’s Green Mountains do, but the golden trees provide a worthy complement to the russet diabase, the grooved volcanic rock that gives the Palisades its striated face. And the thinning of leaf cover creates unexpected vistas — a neck-craning waterfall, or tumbledown jetties — that were hidden in July.

 

For a gentle 7.5-mile hike that samples all that the Palisades have to offer, begin in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., about two miles north of the George Washington Bridge. There, at the easternmost end of Palisade Avenue, where the road curves to the right, pick up Dyckman Hill Trail, which is marked by yellow blazes — those small rectangles dabbed on the tree trunks. The path angles down steps carved into the 340-foot slope, hopping back and forth over a hissing stream, until it ends at a marina, the Englewood Boat Basin.

 

In 1930, for 3 cents, a passenger could ride a ferry boat to the marina from Dyckman Street in the Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood, according to “The Story of Englewood Cliffs,” by James J. Greco, published in 1964.

 

That year, ferries carried 1,286,177 cars and 965,696 walk-on passengers across the Hudson, though the opening of the George Washington Bridge the next year killed business almost immediately, according to the book. In 1951, records show, service to Englewood Cliffs ceased for good.

 

The crescent of brown sand dotted with bleached wood just north of the marina forms its boundary with Undercliff Beach. Before the swimming spot, there was a village there (also known as Undercliff), with a half-dozen homes and a school. When the Civilian Conservation Corps built a picnic area in the 1930s, it wiped out what remained of the village, said Eric Nelsen, a historical interpreter for the park.

 

Small waves roll in along the Shore Trail, which is separated from the Hudson along much of its length by nothing more than a low rock wall.

 

DURING World War II, as factories ran around the clock, they spilled chemicals into the river, Mr. Nelsen said. In 1943, deciding that the Hudson was too polluted, the park commission banned swimming. That ban is still in place today, even if the water is measurably cleaner. Still, “people enjoy greater mobility today, and they like the sandy ocean beaches better than muddy rivers,” Mr. Nelsen said. “The Hudson will never be the same kind of draw it was in the old days.”

 

After you hike 3.4 miles north from the beach, past wind-swept coves where the only sound comes from distant motorboats, the Shore Trail intersects with the Huyler’s Landing Trail, which runs uphill and is marked with red blazes.

 

That is perhaps an appropriate color. On Nov. 20, 1776, Gen. Charles Cornwallis used this steep back door to slip his red-coated soldiers into New Jersey undetected. Climbing that grade is worth remarking on, since even without heavy provisions and a musket, I was winded.

 

At the top, Huyler’s flattens and joins the aqua-blazed Long Path, where the hiking is accompanied by the hum of cars whooshing by on the Palisades Interstate Parkway. Glimpses of the Hudson are less frequent from here, as the trail twines and twists through beech groves and past the shells of old estates.

 

There are stone steps crusted in earth and leaves that lead past a foundation wall emblazoned with “1911,” near a half-charred campfire circle; it’s all that remains of Cliff Dale, a mansion that belonged to George Zabriskie, whose Polish ancestors arrived in New Jersey before it was even a state, said Kevin Wright, a past president of the Bergen County Historical Society.

 

Like most of the 15 homes or so that lined “Millionaire’s Row” atop the Palisades, it was bought in the 1930s by John D. Rockefeller and razed to open up Palisades views to the public. “These were the sacrifices made to save the Palisades,” Mr. Wright said.

 

Critics, though, would claim that Rockefeller’s philanthropy was merely meant to create a more scenic panorama from Pocantico Hills, Mr. Rockefeller’s estate across the river in Westchester County. Rockefeller spared one property, though, Penlyn, the Tudor-style address of the Oltman family, probably because it sat out of sight in a hollow. Today, Penlyn, with its slate roof and leaded-glass windows, serves as the park’s headquarters.

 

That diabase cliff rock may have never achieved the stature of, say, granite. Still, quarrymen in the late 1800s did a brisk business in chipping away at the Palisades for gravel to line New York’s roads and for seawalls to protect New Jersey beach towns like Sea Bright, said Karl Muessig, New Jersey’s state geologist.

 

Concerned that the cliffs were in danger of being hauled away, local residents, led by women’s clubs, banned the quarrying, and today the Women’s Federation Monument, just off the Long Path about seven miles from the start of this hike, honors them. A plaque on the wall of the monument, which resembles an oversize chess rook, says that they saved the cliffs “from destruction for the glory of God who created them.”

 

From the monument’s roof, as the wind scattered leaves, the Hudson looked gray and dimpled, like steel, until small sailboats scratched it with their white wakes. Beyond towered the unexpected peaks of the far-off Throgs Neck and Whitestone Bridges.

 

Nature, it seems, hasn’t had the same victories on the opposite bank.

 

 

FROM the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan, a Rockland Coaches bus will deliver you to Englewood Cliffs in about 40 minutes ($4.90 for a one-way ticket; 201-263-1254; www.coachusa.com). If you’re driving, you can park at the Englewood Boat Basin, then pick up the trail there.

 

To return from the Women’s Federation Monument backtrack 25 yards and veer right on the Forest View Trail, blazed with blue and white rectangles. Follow it over the bridge, bear right, then head over a second bridge and continue to the Alpine Scout Camp. The bus stop is on 9W, to the left of the camp entrance, marked by a white sign. Buses, which sell tickets onboard ($5.80 to Manhattan), stop about every hour.

 

Information: www.njpalisades.org; (201) 768-1360.