page_title: Weehawken Port Imperial
section_title: Early ferries and railroads
hierarchical_section_title: Weehawken Port Imperial / History / Early ferries and railroads
context_page_description: Weehawken Port Imperial is an intermodal transit hub on the Weehawken, New Jersey, waterfront of the Hudson River across from Midtown Manhattan, served by New York Waterway ferries and buses, Hudson–Bergen Light Rail, and NJT buses. The district lies under and at the foot of Pershing Road, a thoroughfare which travels along the face of the Hudson Palisades, which rise to its west. The Hudson River Waterfront Walkway runs along the shoreline and is abutted by recently constructed residential neighborhoods, Lincoln Harbor to the south and Bulls Ferry to the north.
context_section_description: The North Hudson waterfront is located north of Weehawken Cove on a long narrow strip of land between the Hudson River and Hudson Palisades. On April 18, 1670 the government of the Province of New Jersey confirmed a grant to Maryn Adriaensen  for a parcel of land called Wiehacken in the jurisdiction of Bergen on Hobooken Creek, 50 morgen Dutch measure originally given on May 11, 1647. Sporadic ferry service began and in 1700 a royal patent was given by Richard Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont which led to the naming of Weehawken Street at the landing across the river in today's West Village. Later called Slough's Meadow, the waterfront has in the last centuries been transformed from a tidal marsh to an extensive rail and shipping port and, since the 1980s, redeveloped for commercial, residential, recreational, and transportation uses. Many duels, including the nation's most famous between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804, took place on a site later obliterated by rail infrastructure of the West Shore Railroad (also used by (New York, Ontario and Western) and the Erie Railroad. Erie's Pier D and Piershed is a remnant of the rail era listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1984.
  The turn of the 20th century saw the growth of the railyards, carfloats, ferry slips, and passenger station of Weehawken Terminal. The main ferry ran to 42nd Street and for short time was a component of the transcontinental Lincoln Highway. The highway and the trolleys of North Hudson County Railway and later the Public Service Railway ascended Pershing Road. The Weehawken was the last ferry to the West Shore Terminal on March 25, 1959, at 1:10 am. and train service was discontinued. The right of way (originally part of the NYC's New Jersey Junction Railroad) was later used by the Penn Central River Division  and the Conrail River Line before being abandoned. The United Fruit Company once maintained the largest banana warehouse in the United States adjacent to its berths. As with much of the traditional harbor of the Port of New York and New Jersey, the infrastructure became obsolete as passenger and freight transport patterns changed.
caption: Extensive yards lined the shore and connected to tunnel under the Palisades
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