New Bridge Landing Keeps a 1776 Calendar. This Fall, Ours Finally Matches.
Thomas Paine wrote about what happened here: "These are the Times that Try Men's Souls." He was describing a retreat that crossed the Hackensack River at the narrows about a mile from Borough Hall, in the third week of November 1776.
Here is the thing most people who live in River Edge have never had a reason to notice. The event calendar at Historic New Bridge Landing is not built around convenient weekends. It is built around anniversaries of things that actually occurred on that ground, which means the dates repeat every year and almost never line up with the round number. This fall they line up. The 250th anniversary of Washington's crossing falls on a November weekend, on the exact site, in the same month, and the Bergen County Historical Society has scheduled the commemoration for November 21 and 22. If you own a home in this borough, this is the one autumn where the site's clock and your clock agree.
The Baron's Oktoberfest lands in late September because that is when Major General Baron von Steuben was born. The retreat event lands the weekend before Thanksgiving because on November 20, 1776, Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis put roughly 5,000 British, Hessian and Loyalist troops ashore and marched on Fort Lee, and the American garrison escaped entrapment on the Bergen Neck by getting across the Hackensack at New Bridge. British troops under Major General Vaughan attacked the rear guard the next day and seized the bridge while American engineers were still taking it apart.
Eleven engagements happened at this crossing over the course of the war. The site served as battleground, encampment ground, military headquarters and intelligence-gathering post in every single year of the Revolution, which is why it carries the nickname "the Bridge That Saved a Nation." The 1752 Steuben House is the only building still standing from the 1776 retreat through Bergen County. In the late summer of 1780 it was Washington's headquarters while more than ten thousand troops and artillery camped along Kinderkamack Road through River Edge and Oradell. If you commute up Kinderkamack, you are driving the length of an encampment.
| When | What | Where | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thu, Sept 17 | Lecture: "Uncommonly Zealous and Active: Abraham Van Buskirk and the New Jersey Volunteers" | 1209 Main St | The neighborhood's Loyalist story, told indoors on a weeknight |
| Sat, Sept 26 | The Baron's Oktoberfest 250th, 1 to 6 p.m. | 1201 Main St | The day the historic house interiors are open, not just the grounds |
| Sat, Nov 21 and Sun, Nov 22 | Retreat to Victory, 250th, 1776 to 2026 | Fort Lee Historic Park and New Bridge Landing | Two towns, two days; the River Edge portion is Sunday |
| Sat, Dec 12 | Holiday Concerts at HNBL | 1209 Main St | Indoor, seated, and the season's quietest ticket |
The full listing lives on the Bergen County Historical Society events page, and the society adds to it as plans firm up.
New Bridge Landing Historic Park is open daily from dawn to dusk. Most residents know this and use it accordingly, walking the meadow, cutting through toward the river. What most residents do not know is that the individual buildings are open only for special events. You can pass the Steuben House four hundred times and never see the inside of it.
The Baron's Oktoberfest is the fall date that changes that. In past years all three eighteenth-century Jersey-Dutch sandstone houses have opened for tours through the afternoon, with Revolutionary War artifacts from the society's collection on display inside the Steuben House and interpreters frying fasnachts in the authentic Jersey-Dutch out kitchen near the Westervelt-Thomas barn. Past editions have also brought craft beer from Bergen County breweries including Brix City, Hackensack Brewery and Gearblock, music from Particle Theory, cannon demonstrations by Mott's Artillery, cornhole and colonial games, and free pumpkin picking and decorating. Confirm the 2026 lineup with the society before you plan around any one of those, because the roster shifts year to year.
Admission for the September 26 date has been listed at $15 for adults, $10 for students ages 12 to 20, $10 for society members, and free for children 11 and under. Set that against what a comparable fall festival costs in this county and the pricing tells you something about the organization: the Bergen County Historical Society is a volunteer nonprofit founded in 1902, and it puts every dollar toward its mission. This is not a commercial event that happens to be on a historic site. It is a fundraiser wearing a beer tent.
RevNJ, the state's official Revolutionary War 250th program, lists the anniversary weekend as beginning Saturday, November 21 at 9 a.m. and running through Sunday, November 22 at 4 p.m., staged jointly at Fort Lee Historic Park and Historic New Bridge Landing. The society's own calendar puts Saturday's activity in New Milford and Sunday's Retreat to Victory in River Edge. Read that as a sequence rather than a schedule conflict. The invasion came from the Palisades and the retreat ended at the bridge, and the commemoration is following the same route the armies did.
Past Retreat to Victory events have put a reenactor Washington on horseback leading troops across the New Bridge at the exact location, with skirmishes on the second day, house and barn tours, cooking in the out kitchen and children's activities running through the day. Plan for company. The November 2025 edition drew what the society described as a record-breaking crowd, and that was the 249th.
Which makes the logistics worth deciding in advance rather than in a car. Free parking exists on site, including the lot at Hackensack Avenue and Main Street and the Ackerman Zabriskie Tide Mill lot. The better move on a 250th weekend is the one almost nobody uses: NJ Transit's Pascack Valley Line stops at New Bridge Landing station, one block from the site. Residents on the west side of the borough can be at the meadow without touching Main Street traffic.
Something else is happening on that ground this fall. Construction started in October 2025 on a 3,750-square-foot history museum and civic education center designed by Arcari & Iovino Architects, on society-owned land beside the parking lot. As of the society's June 2026 announcement, Phase 1 is complete and fundraising continues for Phase 2. Plans call for modern galleries, a flexible multipurpose room for lectures and school programs, climate-controlled storage for a collection that has largely never been on permanent display, and full ADA accessibility.
"This building will finally give our history a permanent home," society president Beverly Hashimoto said at the groundbreaking, which drew River Edge Mayor Thomas Papaleo and Bergen County Clerk John Hogan.
Read past the ribbon-cutting language and there is a real change coming for people who live nearby. The stated goal is year-round programming at a site that has always run on seasonal events. School groups on weekday mornings. Rotating exhibits. Visitors who arrive because a museum is open, not because a reenactment is scheduled. The empty October meadow that residents currently treat as a private amenity has a shelf life, and this fall is one of the last of them.
The site is a destination for ninety minutes, not six hours, so the residents who get the most out of it pair it with something.
Every town in Bergen County will fly a 250th banner this year. River Edge has the ground. That distinction is easy to overlook when you live inside it, and it is a large part of why buyers who tour this borough with any sense of what they are looking at come away describing it differently than they describe the towns on either side. A National Historic Landmark district at the end of Main Street, a train station one block from it, and a walkable park you can reach without getting in the car is a specific combination, not a general one.
If you own here, the honest advice is simple: go in November. Take the train. Then, when you are eventually curious about what all of that is worth in your own address, I am glad to tell you plainly. Keren Abraham has spent more than 23 years reading exactly these differences between Bergen County boroughs. Let's make it happen. Get your free home valuation.
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