National Park Status Sought for Paterson
Waterfall Site
The New York Times
By: Robert
Hanley, Staff
February 26, 2001
PATERSON, N.J., Feb. 19 — New Jersey's two United States senators
and one of its House members opened a campaign today to create a national park around the Great Falls,
Paterson's landmark and the essence of its birth as a major manufacturing center after the Revolutionary War.
"You're standing on hallowed ground; it's precious land,"
Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a former mayor of Paterson, told about 50 preservationists and local
government officials as the falls in the background tumbled 77 feet into a gorge. The group was clustered on a
promenade beneath a statue of Alexander Hamilton, who founded Paterson in 1792 on the dream of harnessing the
falls' power for industry.
Senator Robert G. Torricelli said that Hamilton's vision led to the
Industrial Revolution, likening its historical importance to Thomas Jefferson's vision of Washington as a
cradle of democracy. Designating the falls as a national park would create a "window into America's
industrial past," Mr. Torricelli said.
New Jersey's other senator, Jon S. Corzine, was not there but
released a statement saying he hoped the campaign for a park would produce the best way to "create living
history" of the community's technological and social innovation in the 1800's.
The three lawmakers have introduced legislation that would require
the federal Interior Department to explore the suitability of the Great Falls for a national park. Designation
as a park, they said, could lead to millions of dollar in federal money to speed restoration of old factories
that decades ago hummed with the production of silk fabrics, locomotives and Colt revolvers.
They said they also envisioned restaurants, museums and other
attractions for schoolchildren and tourists near the site. Designation as a park would also provide badly
needed full- time staffing for the site by the National Park Service, they said.
The Interior Department declared the Great Falls and about 118 acres
around it a national historic landmark in 1976. Nine years earlier, the department dedicated the falls as a
natural landmark. During the 1990's, the federal government provided about $7 million for renovation of old
factories and construction of pathways and bridges for visitors.
Senators Torricelli and Corzine and Representative Pascrell, who was
mayor of Paterson from 1990 to 1996, said they hoped their legislation would bring millions of dollars more
and quicken the pace of revival.
Mr. Pascrell suggested that Paterson's current leaders were less than
enthusiastic about working with the Interior Department and about providing local money to help with the
renovations the federal government financed in the 1990's.
"My goal is to create a partnership between Paterson and the
National Park Service," Mr. Pascrell said. "I'm confident the City of Paterson is up to the
task."
Paterson's mayor, Martin Barnes, who attended today's ceremony, said
he endorsed the idea that a national park would be good for Paterson's economy.
"We will give everything we can possibly give," Mr. Barnes
said, "because it's the right thing to do."