History
It
is said that prior to the arrival of the first Europeans
in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Port Jervis was
known as "Magagkamack,"
which is a Lenni-Lenape
(Delaware Indian) phrase that
has been interpreted as "pumpkin field" or
"land covered in grass." It was in the
general vicinity of Port Jervis that a sub-group of the
Lenape, the Munsee, made their traditional seat of
government.
Because
of its location and waterways, which also includes the
mouth of the Neversink
river, Port Jervis has long
been a transportation hub.
Begun
in 1825, the Delaware
and Hudson Canal was the
nation's first million dollar private venture and it
crossed Port Jervis as did what is sometimes described as
the oldest
100 mile commercial road in America. It
is after John
B. Jervis, one of the D & H
Canal's principal engineers, that the city is
named.
As
the transportation and mining of coal was the reason the D
& H canal was built, one of the accomplishments
achieved by the city's namesake related to that work was
designing the
first steam engine locomotive ever
to run in the United States.
Consistent
with its geography and prominence in early 19th century
transportation, Port Jervis also became an important
railroad center and still has
one of the region's few remaining steam
engine turntables.
Perhaps
the most famous of Port Jervis citizens was the acclaimed
author of the Red Badge of Courage, Stephen
Crane, who started school here
at age six. The inspiration for that novel and other
of his works held associations to Port Jervis where he
stayed with his brother
William, wrote articles in the
local newspaper, and would return throughout most of his
adult life.
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Useful
Links
Today,
commuter rail service to points east and south, -
including New York City - is provided by New
Jersey Transit. Additional
connections can be made by Amtrak
in Manhattan's Penn Station and through the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority, of
which Metro-North
Railroad is part.
The following
link provides the location of and directions to the
Port
Jervis train station.
Transportation
by CoachUSA|Shortline
Bus service is available
with connections at the Port
Authority Bus Terminal.
Interstate
Route 84 and New Jersey's
Route
23 are found at the city's
southeastern border.
Likewise,
both Stewart
International Airport and the
New
York State Thruway (I-87) can be
reached by a convenient 45 minute drive via Interstate
Route 84.
New
York Route
17 (future I-86) also connects
with the Interstate and lies approximately 30 minutes from
Port Jervis.
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Attractions
About
a 90 minute drive from New
York City, and within a
day's ride of Philadelphia,
PA, Atlantic
City, NJ, Washington,
D.C., Boston,
MA, and Montreal,
Canada, Port Jervis retains its
rural quality.
Attracted
by the area's
natural beauty, including the
scenic "Hawk's
Nest" section of New York
Route 97, every year hundreds of thousands of visitors
canoe
and raft down the Delaware river.
This same region is a popular fishing
spot and is graced with American
Bald Eagles that can be observed
from public viewing areas, particularly during the winter
months.
A
map giving short descriptions and locations of some of the
area's attractions can be
found
here.
Additional
Information
The
following additional Wikipedia.org information about Port
Jervis and related areas is made available under the
terms and conditions of Creative
Commons.
Port Jervis is
a city in Orange County, New York. The population was 8,860
at the 2000 census. It is part of the
Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan
Statistical Area as well as the larger New
York–Newark–Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined Statistical
Area.
The communities
of Deerpark, Huguenot, Sparrowbush, and Greenville are
adjacent to Port Jervis. The towns of Montague, New Jersey
and Matamoras, Pennsylvania face the city across the
respective state borders. Port Jervis is the home of the
last stop on the 95-mile-long (151 km) Port Jervis
Line, which is a commuter railroad line from Hoboken, New
Jersey and New York City that is contracted to NJ Transit by
the Metro-North Commuter Railroad Company—the line itself
continues on to Binghamton and Buffalo, but passenger
service beyond Port Jervis was discontinued in 1966.
On June 2,
1892, Robert Lewis, an African American, was lynched on Main
Street in Port Jervis after being accused of participation
in an assault on a white woman. A grand jury indicated nine
people in connection with the lynching. This event
would serve as inspiration for one-time Port Jervis resident
and author Stephen Crane's 1898 novella The Monster.
Port Jervis
grew steadily into the 1900s. On July 26, 1907, it became a
city.
In the mid
1920's the Ku Klux Klan was active in the area, burning
crosses on Point Peter, the mountain peak that overlooks
Port Jervis.
As of the 2010 census
information available in March 2011 there were 8,828
people reported living in Port Jervis which represented a
decrease of 32 individuals or -.04% compared to a decade
earlier. The 2010 data showed the ethnic composition
of the community was 6,735 White, non-Hispanic,
1,054 Hispanic, 654 Black, 117 Asian, and 800
categorized as other with 6,596 of those individual listed
as adults and 2,232 as children. 2010
census figures noted 3,957 housing units and 387 vacant
housing.
South of the
Laurel Grove Cemetery, under the viaduct for Interstate 84,
are two monuments that symbolically mark the boundaries
between the states of New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania.
The Tri-State
Monument is a replacement for the original monument erected
in 1774 that was important in resolving the New York - New
Jersey Line War.
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