As I was leaving the computer room a few minutes ago, my eye caught a book I had forgotten i owned: "Camp Merritt," by Howard Rose, written in 1973 on the "Let's tell the story before everybody dies" premise. It allows me to add or clarify some details. Major General Wesley Merritt served from 1855, when he entered West Point, until his retirement in 1900. His career included fighting at Gettysburg, commanding West Point, and serving as Governor of the Phillipines after the Spanish surrender. The 580 acres of the camp occupied parts of Tenafly, Cresskill, Demarest, Haworth, Dumont and Bergenfield. The facilities served 30,000 men and women at a time. Embarkation often meant hiking up and over the hill to Alpine landing, boarding New York harbor ferry boats for transport to Hoboken or other pier facilities and reboarding the final vessels. After all, these were mostly infantrymen: they walked for a living. Rail freight service was via the West Shore; there was no connection with the Northern RR of NJ. Construction started inJuly, 1917, and the first troops arrived in September, 1917. The camp was abandoned in November, 1919, and sold to Harris Brothers, of Chicago, for dismantling. After several spectacular fires in 1921, little remained. Several buildings in the area survived but are hardly recognizable as part of a military complex. From 1958 to 1966, my family and I owned a small house in Tenafly at the very southeast corner of the camp which had served as officers' billets. In the summer of 1919, 15,000 soldiers traveled to Washington to take part in General Pershing's celebration there. They went by rail, using 17 trains of 15 cars each. The commanding officer of the Port of Embarkation at New York when Camp Merritt was built was Major General David C. Shanks -- but that's another story. Randy Brown The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org ------------------------------
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