Historic New Bridge Landing

Owing to its strategic location at the narrows of the Hackensack River and its proximity to Manhattan, the principal base of British operations throughout the war, Historic New Bridge Landing has numerous associations with the American Revolution, as a battleground, the site of several skirmishes, military encampments and headquarters for both armies.

The Zabriskie-Steuben House is the only extant house along the route of the British invasion and Washington’s Retreat of November 1776 through Bergen County. General Washington established his headquarters in the Zabriskie dwelling in September 1780 during the Steenrapie encampment of the Continental army.

New Bridge prospered for more than a century after the war as a commercial crossroads, situated where a major overland thoroughfare of travel and trade intersected the head of sloop navigation on the Hackensack River. The extant iron swing bridge, manually operated, was erected in 1889 to speed the passage of schooners and testifies to the importance of commercial river traffic at that date. The New Bridge is listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places as the oldest highway swing bridge in the State of New Jersey.

Historic New Bridge Landing preserves a compelling and scenic fragment of the Jersey Dutch countryside. Its distinctive antique dwellings, artifact collections and scenic landscapes are uniquely reminiscent of a vanished folk culture, dependent upon the tidal river as a commercial artery and a self-renewing source of nourishment and industrial power.