The Kirby Mount St. Elias/DBL 82 ATB has been a regular on the Hudson River routes this winter. On Friday morning, the unit passed West New York, New Jersey on her way down the North River. The accurately if unimaginatively named town sits between Weehawken and Guttenberg, NJ and lettering at the top of the Palisades cliff identifying this little stretch of the riverbank is visible to the left of the elevated wheelhouse on the tug in the photo.

The sign is no doubt intended to inform viewers on the New York City side of the river, or perhaps travelers on the river itself, what municipality they are looking at, but in truth the lettering is too small to be visible from very far away and if it were not for occasionally catching it in the frame of my zoom lens I would not know it was there.

The entire New York side of the North River is occupied by a single municipality, but along the once-industrial New Jersey shoreline there are eight, stretching from Jersey City to Englewood Cliffs. The New Jersey side of the river never experienced the municipal consolidation which forged greater New York City in the late 19th Century, in fact fragmenting into more independent municipalities during this time.