🌉 Paterson Great Falls NHP

December 1, 2024

🌉 Paterson Great Falls NHP

Sunday November 17th, 2024

The plan today is to head over to New Jersey to get a national park passport stamp at Paterson Great Falls and to also to take a walking tour that is hosted by a park ranger.

Getting the stamp for my passport book is the goal, but it feels more meaningful to learn or have an experience during the trip.

Tours are a fantastic way to add meaning to these visits.

So let’s get up early and head out of town.

I had planned to take a train over to New Jersey, but my map app is suggesting a bus this morning, so off to the bus station!

I always ask the person at the front where to get to my bus.

I’m glad I got here early, this was difficult to maneuver.

I asked three different people for where to find the bus and how to buy the ticket.

I have the New Jersey transit app, but I just couldn’t figure it out this morning.

And when I do figure it out, the app then wants to know how many zones I’ll be traveling through.

I have no idea.

What zones does New Jersey have that I need to count?

There’s a way to list your starting and ending point, but that wasn’t working right. I think you have to know the station name to use this.

I’ll figure it out eventually, but I still haven’t fully mastered the NYC transit system.

But I have my ticket and we’re off!

The change from train to bus saved me about seven dollars.

Pretty cool.

Per usual, I wrote a postcard to my pal Tony in Michigan to update him on my travels.

I made it!

Check out this water fall!

I mean, I guess it’s in the name but I really hadn’t thought about it.

Hamilton?

I saw his Broadway show recently.

This location is currently in flux.

New items are being built and some areas are blocked off.

That bridge over the waterfall, for example, is no longer open.

The bridge is no longer stable.

Also, this is a hydro electric plant here.

An old one.

But it’s still running.

Silhouette on zee water.

It’s much easier to see the water fall down by the power plant.

It’s nice to get a look around before the tour starts.

It seems like the buildings here have changed since covid.

I was chatting with the rangers a bit and I think the former visitor center is now a storage area and the ranger’s building is more of an office.

Currently they bring out the passport book stamp on a table that they set up for visitors.

The park maps and pamphlets are also kept here.

The rest of the pictures are from the tour where we learned about the baby strike, the creation of the IWW, that there used to be a swimming academy here where folks skin would be dyed different colors different days of the week from the local cloth dying industry dumping into the river.

In the following photo you can see a circle of bricks in the side of this building from where a giant water pipe used to run in to power a water wheel.

Here are the remains of some of the old industry buildings in the area.

A new visitor center is being built in this area.

Oh! I mentioned the swimming classes.

There’s still a pole sticking out of the water here from the setup that they had.

There are other water falls in the area as well.

Look at these tree roots!

Thank you.

They walled off a lot of items with bricks around here.

More falls!

I tried to visit a baseball museum nearby, but there was a children’s sporting event happening here and it was a whole confusing mess, so I didn’t go in.