The George Washington Bridge: Where the Country Ends

The George Washington Bridge carries Interstate Eighty across the Hudson River from New Jersey to upper Manhattan, and it is the busiest bridge in the world by vehicle count, over a hundred million crossings per year. The upper level opened in nineteen thirty-one. The lower level opened in nineteen sixty-two, added because the upper level had already filled beyond design capacity.

Le Corbusier called it the most beautiful bridge in the world. He was referring specifically to the exposed steel towers, which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had planned to clad in stone but could not afford to during the Depression. They left the steel exposed.

Le Corbusier was right. The Hudson River beneath it is about a mile wide. The Lenape people, Lenape is a word meaning the original people, had lived throughout this watershed for thousands of years.

The island of Manhattan is called Mannahatta in Lenape, which has been translated as island of many hills. The hills are gone. The bedrock remains, which is why New York can build skyscrapers: the rock is close to the surface, hard enough to bear the weight, and does not settle.

The Palisades, the basalt cliffs on the New Jersey shore that you have been driving beside for the last twenty miles, are the edge of a two-hundred-million-year-old lava intrusion that was pushed up as the Atlantic Ocean began to open. They are protected from development by the Palisades Interstate Park, which runs about twelve miles along the top of the cliffs in New Jersey. From the bridge, looking south, you can see the Manhattan skyline from river to river.

No approach to a city in the country produces this view from this angle. It is still the most dramatic entrance in the country.