April 2, 2009
 
Our Towns
  In New Jersey, History Speaks to the Present By PETER APPLEBOME
History is told in many strange ways, and often it isn’t told at all.
But for a reminder of how much politics, strategy and salesmanship can
go into the telling, consider the scene on Monday when President Obama
signed legislation establishing a national park in, of all places,
Paterson, N.J., a faded industrial town that is one of the poorest in
the nation.
This was no small triumph for Paterson; for its congressman and former
mayor, Bill Pascrell Jr.; and for one Leonard Zax, a Paterson native
and lawyer who a few years back took on the role of designated pain in
the butt to push this thing forward.
Reporters deal with people like him all the time, many of them
invested in some cause that is unlikely to see the light of day. That
definitely seemed the case with the proposed Paterson Great Falls
National Historical Park, billed as a way to preserve Alexander
Hamilton’s vision of an industrial America at the Great Falls of the
Passaic River, where every day two billion gallons of water cascade 77
feet to the gorge below. In a draft report, officials said existing
parks covered the themes proposed for Paterson. The Bush
administration, for economic reasons, opposed adding national parks,
and the idea, to the uninitiated, seemed more than a stretch.
Actually, as a resolute cadre of historians pointed out, the idea
wasn’t a stretch at all. And for Mr. Zax, it became a testament not
just to the power of history but to one thing Americans value even
more — home.
“I am what I am because of Paterson,” said Mr. Zax, whose grandparents
settled there in the early 1900s and whose father became a well-known
lawyer. “Paterson matters to me, and the more I talked to residents
and scholars, the more I realized how many of them had affection for
or took inspiration from Paterson and its history.”
As historians including Ron Chernow, Richard Sylla and Richard
Brookhiser have noted, the country’s industrial history began at
Paterson. Looking for a site for America’s first industrial city, his
counterpoint to Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian America,
Hamilton saw the raging waters of the falls as an energy source and
located his town there. The result, wrote Mr. Chernow, was “this
futuristic city, this model of what America could be.”
Paterson became a city of mills and factories, making everything
Hamilton envisioned: cotton, sailcloth, flax, hemp, paper, nails,
steel, iron, silk and much more. Over time, there was the first Colt
revolver plant and the world’s first motorized submarine.
The falls endure. The factories, almost all shuttered husks, are a sad
reminder of the nation’s industrial past.
The roots of the park effort date to the 1960s, when the city fought
off a proposed highway through the area. The Great Falls were named a
national historical landmark in 1976. Mr. Pascrell proposed a study of
the feasibility of the park in 2001. Over lunch in 2006, he discussed
the project with Mr. Zax, who investigated its chances and then, after
realizing that someone had to be the designated pest and promoter if
it was to happen, took on the job of helping get the proposal through
Congress.
WHEN the proposal finally became law this year, the 35-acre site
became the 391st national park, part of a network that includes great
wildernesses like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite and urban areas like
Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts.
Mr. Zax, who since July has been chairman of the Hamilton Partnership,
a nonprofit effort to create the park and related community
development, lined up a broad coalition to make his case. History is
about the past, but it’s about the present, too.
One of the supporters was John Hope Franklin, who died last week and
had been chairman of the federal advisory board that produced a 2001
report, “Rethinking the National Parks for the 21st Century.” He told
Mr. Zax that millions of Americans, particularly members of racial
minorities and recent immigrants, felt little or no connection to our
national park system. He hoped that a park in urban Paterson would
resonate with Americans, starting with the Latino, African-American
and Muslim residents who otherwise might never set foot in a national
park.
And with the nation’s economy sagging and its industrial base in
tatters, a remark Mr. Pascrell made a few years back seems even more
relevant now.
“We have lost our will to make anything,” he said. “A guy or gal who
uses plastic, uses metal, uses wood to create objects is looked down
on. That’s why this is important.”
E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com