Transporting to and from the landing from our works only 872 tons, on average in one year; a saving o five miles in the distance will therefore save the transporting of one ton 4360 miles. To which add the freight of all Sterling Works, Ringwood, Dater’s and the forge building by Mr. Suffern, and the road is of considerable magnitude to this part of the community.”
But it was not only the shortening of the distance to the river, and hence to market, which lead the manufactures of the Ramapo Valley earnestly to desire this road, but also that they might reach a better landing. “The waters also at Haverstraw” writes Mr. Pierson “are an extending flat, so that the boats never go to and from the docks except at high water, and the tides frequently being insufficient, the boats miss their weekly trips, and further, these flats freeze so that the landing is the most obstructed by ice of any on the river below the Highlands. On the contrary, Nyack has a channel close in shore and plenty of water at ebb tide, is far less obstructed with ice, and boats have repeatedly sailed for weeks together from that dock when Haverstraw and the Sloat were both fast with ice and is 9 or 10 miles nearer New York.”
For These considerations and others, after repeated petitions, by an act of Legislature April 17th 1816, the Nyack Turnpike Company was incorporated with Teunis Smith, Robert Hart, Abraham Tallman, Teunis DePew, Peter Smith, Jeremiah H. Pierson, Edward Suffern, John E. Meyer and William Young, incorporators. The road “to begin at the cross road near Nyack Landing in Orangetown, in the county of Rockland, between the houses of Teunis Smith and Peter Smith, running thence westerly along the old road until in front of said Peter Smith’s dwelling house, and from thence the most direct and convenient route to the Orange Turnpike road, and to pass in front of the dwelling house of John Suffern in the town of Hempstead in the said county.”
The stock was to consist of 700 shares of $25 each, Jeremiah H. Pierson, John E Myers and Teunis Smith were appointed commissioners to receive subscriptions for the stock, and no toll gate was to be placed within one-half mile of its junction with the Orange Turnpike.
April 20th 1830 a further act was passed by the legislature entitled “An act to improve the state road from the orange turnpike in the county of Rockland,” by which J. H. Pierson and Edward Suffern of the town of Ramapo, Lucas Ackers and Isaac Lydacker of Clarkstown, and John Green, Teunis Smith and Peter Smith of the town of Orange were appointed trustees to superintend such repairs and improvements.
The charter of the Nyack Turnpike was renewed June 18th 1853
As originally run the road made a detour to the south at Monsey to avoid a swamp, and it passed out of the town about a mile east of the “Little Church in the Orchard” (See History of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Spring Valley)
In 1871 the Alturus Company opened a road from Monsey directly across the swamp toward Spring Valley, which road is largely traveled under the impression that it is the Nyack Turnpike. It joins the turnpike near the “Dutch Factory”.
About a mile and a half southeast of Suffern, on the North side of the turnpike, is a huge boulder. Prof. Cook, State geologist of New Jersey, says, that this a the larger boulder to be observed in this part of the country, that “the rock is a Feldspathic Gneiss traversed by veins of Syenite; that it may not have traveled far, as the nearest outcrop of Crystalline rock is not more than two miles away, and that its dimensions are 45 by 30 by 25 feet, and its estimated weight 1,500 tons.
