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By Ted Waddell
NARROWSBURG- The Town of Tusten is
looking toward the future by looking back.
The riverside hamlet of Narrowsburg
hopes to build a tiny park overlooking the Delaware River, thus offering local
residents, merchants and tourists a unique vantage point from which to view the
river and glance back to the area's history.
A few years ago, an idea was floated to
construct a riverwalk behind the storefronts overlooking the river.
But the idea quickly sank because the owners of the buildings weren't thrilled
with the thought of bypassers intruding upon their privacy.
But when the idea surfaced of using
virtually abandoned land owned by the town, NYS Department of Transportation
(DOT) and the NY/PA Joint Interstate Bridge Commission, followed by a couple of
public meetings to discuss the issues, the tide appeared to turn in favor of
building a small park on state and municipal land.
"When I got into office on January
1 1998, the ball was still kicking around to build some kind of park to beautify
the area and attract tourists," said Town of Tusten Supervisor Dick
Crandall, a former NYS Trooper, real estate broker and town justice.
Elaine Giguere, executive director of
the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance (DVAA), spearheaded the process of filing a
planning grant which was submitted to and later approved by the NYS Council on
the Arts.
Using funds from the $11,000 grant,
Edward Boyer, a licensed landscape architect, then prepared a detailed project
narrative and design outline of the proposed Narrows Riverfront
Park. The proposal, seeking a 50/50 matching grant, was sent to the
NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historical Preservation.
According to Crandall, the town's share
of the proposed $94,000 project ($47,000) would come from the town owned land
valued at $25,000, services provided by the local highway department and
volunteer labor. If approved, the state would kick in the remaining
$47,000.
According to Crandall, if the matching
grant isn't approved, the park isn't going to get built.
"Everyone is concerned about the
town's share, because we don't have a lot of discretionary money," he
said. "What we do have is spent on nuts and bolts, maintaining
the town hall and saving up to build a new highway barn."
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| The
plans for the proposed river overlook in Narrowsburg |
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Noting that he is confident the grant
to construct the overlook park will eventually get approved, Crandall added,
"Every town that I've ever seen that has a body of water near it, has
oriented itself to the attractions of the water. If we get a park built -
at no expense to the local taxpayer - it should encourage the people along Main
Street to fix up the backs of their buildings and recognize the value of
riverfront property."
Looking back at the lessons learned
from the failed idea to establish a riverwalk behind the storefronts above the
river, Giguere said, "Rather than throw the baby out with the bath water
and scrap the whole thing, people said, 'Let's do a mini-park in an area where
we don't have to infringe on private property'."
The site of the proposed Narrows
Overlook Park is rich in local history. According to Town of Tusten
Historian Art Hawker, the first bridge to span the river at "The
Narrows" was built in 1832. In those days, it cost a lot of
money to cross the 25 foot wide toll bridge: 37.5 cents for a one-horse wagon,
six cents for pedestrians and a dollar for four horses. The
privately-owned bridge was one link of the old Mount Hope-Lumberland Turnpike.
Hawker noted that since, in the early
1800's, a dollar a day was considered pretty good wages, a lot of people forded
the river in a downstream shallows.
Between 1832 and 1848, disaster struck
twice, as ice and high water swept the original span away.
In 1848, a 250 foot long wooden covered
bridge was erected 35 feet above the low water line. This bridge
remained in use until a new single-span steel truss (Baltimore type) bridge was
completed in 1899 by the Oswego Bridge Company.
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Tolls were dropped on January 12 1927,
when the Interstate Bridge Commission accquired the bridge. In 1953,
the new steel bridge linking New York and Pennsylvania was completed.
As historical footnotes, Hawker added
that a post office opened on the Pennsylvania side of the river in 1837 to serve
the riverside community then known as Big Eddy. On September 19,
1840, the post office closed and reopened the same day across the river in New
York. In November 1893, the post office officially changed the
postmark from Big Eddy to Narrowsburg.
Now locals like landscape architect Ed
Boyer are looking to capture that history through the overlook.
Boyer moved to the flats of Narrowsburg
from Philadelphia, Pa. three years ago.
"The park is intended to beautify
the entrance to New York State; to make a place where people can see the river,
stroll, sit and picnic; to cover the slopes around the bridge with native
species; and to be the anchor for reviving Main Street and its adjacent
riverfront," he said.
The central focus of the proposed .9
acre riverfront park is an overlook built on the old 1899 dry-laid bluestone
bridge abutment, founded on a rock ledge 24 feet above the Delaware River.
"Narrowsburg is a river
community," added Boyer. "It is situated on a dramatic
bend where rock cliffs force the Delaware River through a narrow channel to
emerge in a wide placid gyre called Big Eddy. The park will afford
residents (of the town) a place for community events, commemoratives and
festivities, (and) will offer visitors a vista of the Delaware and an excuse to
linger and experience something of life in a river hamlet."
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