As the most dominant feature of the landscape for miles around, the cliffs of the Palisades formed a dramatic backdrop as history unfolded before them. In the time before the Europeans arrived, the cliffs provided shelter, protection and a unique observation point for Native Americans including the Sanhikan, Hackensack, Raritan and Tappan tribes, who were all part of the Lenape people who welcomed Verrazzano, and maintained seasonal riverfront encampments for fishing, hunting and trading. The Europeans who arrived and settled after Henry Hudson’s voyage in the 17th century gradually built hamlets and small villages at the base of the cliffs, as well as roads that led over the Palisades to the farmland on the other side.

During the American Revolution, the Palisades played a key role in an engagement called The Capture of Fort Lee. Hoping to deal a death-blow to George Washington and his Army, under cover of darkness, British General Charles Cornwallis ferried 5,000 soldiers across the Hudson from New York and sent them up the New Jersey cliffs to attack the fort. Legend has it that patriot John Clifford, riding on horseback, tipped Washington off, who led his forces successfully on a hasty retreat across New Jersey. Although the attempted attack on Fort Lee was the largest military action involving the Palisades, there were numerous smaller skirmishes and actions during the Revolution as well.

Given their visibility on the Manhattan side of the Hudson, it was perhaps inevitable that someone would think of the Palisades as a unique giant advertising billboard. After the Civil War, signs advertising patent medicines (remedies of questionable therapeutic value spiked with healthy amounts of alcohol) and other products, painted in letters 20 feet high, covered the face of the cliffs. The practice, which also appeared in the White Mountains in New Hampshire and on the rocks at Niagara Falls, led to a public outcry and, eventually, legislation to limit outdoor advertising.

While product peddling was banished from the Palisades, movie-making soon found a foot-hold. In fact, the Palisades — Fort Lee, NJ, to be precise — was the location for the wildly popular film, The Perils of Pauline, which came to theaters starting in 1914. In the movie, the title character and her boyfriend Harry are forced to flee from a villain who chases them down the side of a cliff. The Palisades provided a perfect stage set. Quite a few years later, the word “cliffhanger” entered the English language to describe stories with suspenseful endings.

In her various heroine roles in the early 1900s, actress Pearl White flirted with danger in a long string of sequels that included “The Exploits of Elaine,” “The New Exploits of Elaine,” “The Romance of Elaine,” two war-time pictures and more. Dodging bullets, dangling from balloons, leaping in and out speeding cars, trains, boats and airplanes — all without a stunt double — took their toll on Pearl in terms of twists, sprains and a broken collarbone. By the time she retired in 1924, White was a very wealthy woman with a fortune of $2 million — more than $29 million in today’s dollars! The man lying on the Palisades ledge, the man holding on to his jacket and the cameraman all make their way to Hollywood in due course and enjoy considerable success as director, actor and cinematographer, respectively.

Real estate on the Palisade cliffs overlooking the Hudson and New York was an irresistible lure to affluent businessmen, bankers, investors, and others beginning in the 1850s. The first mansion to roost on the summit was called Falcon Lodge, near today’s Tenafly-Alpine border. Its owner, Joseph Lamb, the founder of a leading U.S. stained glass studio, loved his home enough to endure a commute that involved a train ride up the east side of Manhattan to a place where he met up with a fisherman who rowed him across the river to the base of a steep path that he climbed to his home.

Following Lamb was the owner of a cereal mill, a newspaper reporter, and an architect. A publisher built a home called Gray Cliffs. A successful banker invested in the construction of the Palisades Mountain House, a 500-bed hotel that burned down in 1884. Rio Vista, the estate built by a sugar dealer from Cuba (near the present-day Alpine Lookout of the Palisades Interstate Parkway), had a carriage house, a garage with a rotating platform, squash and tennis courts, a man-made lake and a clock tower that still stands in the Rio Vista neighborhood in Alpine, N.J.

Before the opening of the George Washington Bridge in 1931, John D. Rockefeller Jr., concerned the bridge would lead to over-development, began buying property along the Palisades summit. In 1933, as part of a far-sighted plan to protect the Palisades, Rockefeller donated 723 acres to be used for a scenic roadway (the Palisades Interstate Parkway). Whatever land wasn’t needed was to be returned to its native state. Information about the stately homes of Millionaires’ Row and much else besides is available at njpalisades.org.

It was labeled, without a trace of modesty, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” It was otherwise known as the Ringling Brothers Circus and it made John Nicholas Ringling a very wealthy man. After settling down to married life in his 30s, John and his wife Mabel took a liking to a spot on the cliffs of the Palisades. In 1918, they purchased two homes and combined them into a 20-room manor that featured stables, a greenhouse, two cottages, an elevator and an electric pipe organ on 100 acres of clifftop land in Alpine, NJ. Parties at Gray Crag were, as one might expect, a genuine circus: Ringling was known to bring all his performers across from Yonkers on a ferry for a weekend to entertain his guests. The Ringlings held on to Gray Crag for a decade before putting it on the market. In the 1930s, the estate was torn down to make way for the Palisades Interstate Parkway.

Having survived the forces of nature for more than 200 million years, in the second half of the 19th century, the Palisades came up against the forces of man. Trees at the summit of the Palisades were an easy-to-reach source of timber for railroad ties. The slopes of rock that had fallen to the foot of the Palisades offered high-quality stone for rail beds, buildings and roads in fast-growing New York City. 

Prior to the use of dynamite, stone harvested from dozens of small-scale quarries was used for building docks for the New York seaport and cobblestones for paving the streets in the city. After dynamite was patented in 1867, quarries blasted day and night — releasing as much as 12,000 cubic yards of stone each day and the columns in the cliffs began to disappear before the eyes of disbelieving New Yorkers.

A group of concerned citizens sought to protect the Palisades by turning them into an area where troops could practice maneuvers (and where quarrying would not be permitted). But Congress declined the invitation in 1897 and again in 1898. At that point, an unlikely group came to the rescue in the form of the New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs. To save the Palisades, the Federation came up with an approach that had never been tried before. It involved the creation of a Palisades Interstate Park Commission that would have the power to acquire whatever land was needed to protect the Palisades.

Theodore Roosevelt, then Governor of New York State, embraced the plan wholeheartedly and in New Jersey, after the Federation faced down the bitterly-opposed quarrying interests, so did New Jersey Governor Foster M. Voorhees. Because an interstate commission had never been created before, Congress had to pass an Act to allow it.

The region’s unique geological formation posed numerous challenges for the builders of this bridge. A soft organic clay layer at the river bottom­ — in places more than a hundred feet thick — was considered unsuitable for structural support, so very deep, stiff foundations were needed. Steel pipes were driven past the organic layer and had their upper sections filled with concrete to further stiffen them.