North Arlington is a small Bergen County borough perched on a ridge above the Passaic River, with views west toward Belleville and Newark and east over the Meadowlands to the Manhattan skyline. It is a quiet, residential place of small houses, churches and neighbourhood businesses, and much of its land is taken up by large cemeteries, including Holy Cross, one of the biggest Catholic cemeteries in the region.
Its most surprising claim to fame lies underground. In the eighteenth century, the Schuyler family worked a copper mine here, and in the 1750s they installed a steam engine to pump water out of the shafts, the first steam engine in North America, brought over in parts from England. The mine has long since closed, and little remains to see, but local history enthusiasts remember it as the start of the industrial age in America.
The riding into North Arlington is all suburban and urban, along the Passaic River on Riverside Avenue, along Ridge Road and across the busy junctions with Route 7 and Route 17. The roads are lined with shops, houses and traffic lights, with potholes and patches, and traffic can be heavy at rush hour. The Belleville Turnpike crosses the Meadowlands toward Kearny and gives open views of the marshes and the city.
Fuel and food are easy to find along Ridge Road and nearby in Lyndhurst and Belleville. The area has good Italian and Portuguese bakeries and delis, and diners are never far away. Remember the full-service gas rule in New Jersey.
After a weekend in the Adirondack foothills, with their lakes and forests and long, empty roads, or a dawn ride through Bear Mountain and Harriman State Park, rolling into North Arlington is a sharp return to the dense, busy world of the New York suburbs. But the view from the ridge, with the skyline glittering across the marshes in the evening, is a good reminder of how close the wild hills are to the city, and how far you have come in a day.