12 Days of Christmas: New Bridge Landing

The barn at New Bridge Landing is a work of art.

Whenever I've felt the need this past year to escape into another era, I've wandered from my nearby home to Historic New Bridge Landing.

You can read about the park at this Bergen County Historical Society site. As explained there, New Bridge is a collection of historic buildings on a site that served as a battleground, fort, encampment, military headquarters, and intelligence-gathering post in every year of the American Revolution. The historical society lovingly preserves the park.

The society sponsored a virtual event to mark the winter solstice: a balladeer presented prose by Charles Dickens, poetry by Robert Louis Stevenson, and other holiday readings.

It wasn't your average Zoom, but it was in keeping with the unique character of the place.

I love New Bridge Landing because it's not like anything else around its Hackensack/River Edge location. Down a busy street from a strip mall off Route 4, and across the way from apartment buildings, a train stop, and a McDonald's, a distinctive red bar stands magnificently out-of-place, amid a field of cattails.

This is the Ghost of New Jersey Past.

Images from New Bridge Landing in 2021 (from top): the barn in March, a maypole dance in May, "the bridge that saved a nation" in July, and scarecrows in October.