There was a time in my life when I was skeptical that the ability to access the Internet on your cell phone could be of any possible use. That was before I got snarled in a giant traffic jam south of Waterbury, Connecticut, at 11 P.M. one night. For a while, my wife and I made the best of it, but eventually our spirits were broken. Slipping in and out of coherence, I began babbling about the Tappan Zee Bridge, which we had crossed a few hours before.
The Tappan Zee connects Nyack and Tarrytown, New York, and has two notable features: its length and a proliferation of telephone boxes along the span. Noting these oddities, I wondered aloud what kind of name “Tappan Zee” was. My wife grabbed my iPhone and looked it up on the Internet. Our car travels have never been the same.
The I-95 corridor is cluttered with bridges, tunnels, and rest stops named for people. Some of the honorees are familiar; many are not. The Tappan Zee, for instance, is named for the local Tappan Indians–but it was renamed the “Tappan Zee-Malcolm Wilson Bridge” in 1994, tacking on an undistinguished governor from the 1970s. While we were stuck in Waterbury, we learned all sorts of things about the bridge via the iPhone. For instance, quite a lot of people throw themselves off the Tappan Zee, so the telephones were put up to give potential suicides a last chance to call for counseling. Also, the bridge sits on one of the widest points of the Hudson, which the Dutch called a “zee” or sea. The location makes no engineering sense, but it does make political sense: Governor Tom Dewey chose a site outside the jurisdiction of the Port Authority.
We’re now somewhat obsessed with learning about infrastructure names during our car rides. The Millard E. Tydings Bridge over the Susquehanna River is named for a Maryland Democrat who served in Congress from 1923 to 1951 and whose long Senate career ended in a feud with Joe McCarthy. The bridge was dedicated by President Kennedy on November 14, 1963. Eight days later, JFK was assassinated; so the following year the stretch of I-95 around the bridge was named for him.
I’m pleased to report that my home state of New Jersey has the most edifying highway honorifics. Whereas most states name their infrastructure after free-spending (and almost always Democratic) politicians–think Major William Francis Deegan–New Jersey’s bridges and rest stops are named for genuinely notable, and often overlooked, people.
For instance, most of the bridges connecting Jersey with Pennsylvania are named for familiar figures: Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross, Walt Whitman. But tucked away in South Jersey is the Commodore Barry Bridge. Barry was a hero of the Revolution, America’s first commissioned naval officer. He won the final two naval battles of the war and put down three mutinies, before dying in Philadelphia in 1803. I think he’d like his bridge.
Even New Jersey’s rest stops are thoughtfully dedicated. There are stops named for Thomas Edison and Alexander Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson, and Grover Cleveland. But there are also stops named for the 19th-century novelist James Fenimore Cooper and the Catholic poet Joyce Kilmer.
Another service center is named for Richard Stockton. One of Washington’s closer friends, Stockton was a moderate who initially sought a compromise between the colonies and the crown. When it became clear that no compromise was possible, he joined the move for independence. In 1776, he was elected to the Second Continental Congress and became the first New Jerseyan to sign the Declaration. Later that year Stockton was captured by the king’s army and offered amnesty if he would but renounce the revolution. Stockton refused.
He was thrown into a New York prison, where brutal treatment wrecked him. Cornwallis moved into his Princeton estate; all of his possessions were plundered by the British. Eventually, Washington arranged a prisoner exchange and Stockton was released, his honor intact but his body, estate, and fortune in ruins. He languished and died in 1781.
In all my years in New Jersey schools, I never heard of Richard Stockton, apart from seeing his name on that rest stop on the turnpike. You would think that some stray teacher or textbook might have mentioned him along the way. Alas, poor Richard never made the cut. There was always one more unit to cram in about Harriet Tubman or the Lenape Indians, about either of whom, I feel reasonably confident, I could still write a 2,000 word disquisition if pressed.
It seems almost grotesque to name a rest stop for such a man. Stockton’s heroism deserves more than a place where travelers pause for day-old Sbarro and a bathroom. But I suppose it’s better than nothing.
JONATHAN V. LAST
