Rosie’s Diner

Come across the GW Bridge and take Route 46 west. Pass through Fort Lee to Palisades Park, over Overpeck Creek and you'll come to lift bridge with turrets. Years ago, on the other side of the bridge was a small traffic circle, and facing the bridge stood Rosie's Diner.

January 1976

We met in the dark at Rosie's early one bitter cold morning. I was a volunteer, a college kid on Christmas break. It was clear that the early morning regulars were there, but so was a crew I was to get to know very well. These were the first environmentalists I had ever met that had actual jobs. And I was there to help.

The clear skies and bright sun did little to warm the day.

The lift bridge wasn't often used, but we had the key to its operating room and it became our ad hoc HQ. Once inside, you could get down to the river below, which we had to do every half hour to measure dissolved oxygen and salinity. These were the upper reaches of the Hackensack and this hydrology study was to help fill in the patterns of flow of this complex estuary.

Cold makes equipment testy and the day was filled with the challenges of keeping things working. The need for heat was our constant refrain. I remember something about a Coleman cookstove aflame tossed out of a turret onto Route 46. I'm not sure whether the fire department showed up.

Of Roads and Patchwork

To the early settlers, the Meadows must have been a a bit of a nuisance, a place you had to get through to get somewhere. A lowland between the Palisades and the Bergen Ridge, the Hackensack River Estuary was wildland that to them needed roads and ferries and later, bridges and railroads. The tow-rope near Little Ferry began operation in 1659.

When the Falls in Paterson started powering an industrial age, Paterson Plank Road, one of the nation's first toll roads, helped goods to markets. Through the meadowlands, it was built on cedar planks to keep wagons out of the mud.

But take away the railroads, the powerlines, the turnpikes and infill and imagine a huge expanse of meadow stretching from Newark to Hackensack, fed by a lazy river, teeming with wildlife. Take in this imagined view, look about you, the ridges, the drainage basin, the connections, and you wouldn't have to study it long to understand it. But that was then, this was now, and we were trying to understand how this cut-up patchwork of an estuary actually worked. After all, we were fools enough to want to fix it or leave it alone.

For that we had to leave our cozy room on the half-hour into the damn cold and take the damn readings.

And I was the volunteer.