1965 (?) pic of Hudson County industry

At http://www.corbis.com put RT001837 into the search box and click on the thumbnail.

Easy to locate it once you notice the pic is backwards.

While you're there might as well look at RT003309 thru 3311 as well. How well can we date these pics? Note that the former H&M Passaic bridge is open-- that stayed open at this time, even though it had been converted for autos?

I believe that photo is the old Koppers Coke plant located in Kearny NJ on the west side of the Hackensack River. The rail line is the old DL&W main line. The photo looks east and it is backwards. The culvert taking the plant road actually exits on Route 7 adn is still there. The plant is long gone and the site isvery contaminated. I have lived in Kearny all my life and do not remember the plant so this photo is particularly interesting to me.

Doug

Dougster wrote:I believe that photo is the old Koppers Coke plant located in Kearny NJ on the west side of the Hackensack River. The rail line is the old DL&W main line. The photo looks east and it is backwards. The culvert taking the plant road actually exits on Route 7 adn is still there. The plant is long gone and the site isvery contaminated. I have lived in Kearny all my life and do not remember the plant so this photo is particularly interesting to me.

Doug

Yep, you nailed it right on the head.

Dougster wrote:I believe that photo is the old Koppers Coke plant located in Kearny NJ on the west side of the Hackensack River. The rail line is the old DL&W main line. The photo looks east and it is backwards. The culvert taking the plant road actually exits on Route 7 adn is still there. The plant is long gone and the site isvery contaminated. I have lived in Kearny all my life and do not remember the plant so this photo is particularly interesting to me.

Doug

At the top right across the river from the coking plant, the way the photo displays backwards, is the then PSE&G new Hudson Generating Station and towards the center next to Hudson is the old and long-gone PSE&G Marion Station. PSE&G bought the "coke gas" byproduct from Koppers for injection into the gas distribution system.

So Koppers made coke? Coal came in on barges? Think the coke left by rail? If so, to where?

Ken, you brought up an interesting point. Before the completion of natural gas pipelines, many cities and private utilities provided "manufactured gas" that was either a by-product of a coking operation, or, in the case of the early gas companies. a primary product... nasty stuff, carbon monoxide and methane, with a level of contaminants that included carbon dioxide and nitrogen, with a similar BTU content per unit volume to today's natural gas. But the whole infrastructure had to be interesting, a lot of coal in, a lot of coke or carbon black out, along with a fair amount of other debris.

That is indeed Lower Hack Lift bridge on the Morristown Line. The site just located off Fish House Road (near where it meets NJ Route 7 at the Wittpenn Bridge).