Hackensack Plank Road
The Hackensack Plank Road, also known as Bergen Turnpike, was a major artery which connected the cities of Hoboken and Hackensack, New Jersey. Like its cousin routes, the Newark Plank Road and Paterson Plank Road, it travelled over Bergen Hill and across the Hackensack Meadows from the Hudson River waterfront to the city for which it was named. It was originally built as a colonial turnpike road as Hackensack and Hoboken Turnpike.[1] The route mostly still exists today, though some segments are now called the Bergen Turnpike. It was during the 19th century that plank roads were developed, often by private companies which charged a toll. As the name suggests, wooden boards were laid on a roadbed in order to prevent horse-drawn carriages and wagons from sinking into softer ground on the portions of the road that passed through wetlands. The company that built the road received its charter on November 30, 1802.[2] The road followed the route road from Hackensack to Communipaw that was described in 1679 as a "fine broad wagon-road."
Hoboken and North Hudson
In 1854, Nicholas Goelz and Peter Melcher changed the starting point of their stage coaches from West Hoboken, to the new settlement of Union Hill, north of West Hoboken, in order to meet the demand created by that new settlement, and used the Hackensack Plank Road as the route to the Hoboken ferry.[7]
Fairview and The Ridgefields
Little Ferry and Hackensack
See also
- Jersey City and Bergen Point Plank Road
- List of turnpikes in New Jersey
- New Jersey Route 18N
- Fairview Quarry
References
- Unofficial New Jersey Route Log
- Laws of the State of New Jersey, 1811, pp. 337-340
- "Hudson County 691 straight line diagram" (PDF). New Jersey Department of Transportation. Retrieved 2009-08-23.
- Hudson County New Jersey Street Map. Hagstrom Map Company, Inc. 2008. ISBN 0-88097-763-9.
- North Hudson 1884 map
- Shippen Street
- Twentieth Anniversary 1919 - 1939 West Hoboken Post No. 14 Union City, New Jersey; The American Legion; Department of New Jersey; Page 31
- "Bergen County Route 124". Archived from the original on 2011-05-14. Retrieved 2009-08-24.
- "The little ferry". The Bergen Evening Record. September 20, 1944.
- "Bergen County 124 straight line diagram" (PDF). New Jersey Department of Transportation. Retrieved 2009-08-23.