Bill Casey and the Hudson River barges, continued

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According to Bill, people had always lived on the barges, mostly old-time river people who earned a living with the barges they owned and lived on. They leased their barges to the railroads  much the way today's truck owner operators lease to trucking companies. Frankly, I can't see how a family could live on a working barge, but that's what Bill said.

The railroads used barges to transport freight from railheads in New Jersey to Manhattan and the other boroughs. The railroads owned some of their own barges too. Those tended to feature rails so freight cars could roll on on one side of the Hudson and off on the other. Typically each barge could carry a dozen freight cars. Back then, the railroads accounted for most of the river traffic, both freight barges and passenger ferries, on the Hudson. 

 It was long before his time, Bill said, but when the original Erie Canal froze in the winter, some freight barges were towed here. Kids attended local schools and dad - and probably mom too - found work in the factories nearby. Some of those Erie Canal barges never left, Bill said, pointing to what he claimed were their remains - corroded planks in the mud nearest the shore. 

World War II and a few years after were good times for barges. Some were towed up the Hudson to Canada with coal and returned with newsprint and lumber. Bill said most of the material used to build New York City had arrived by barge, the Vermont marble for the Brooklyn Bridge, for example.

Many barges  never left. Their owners abandoned them for one reason or another, and new barges tied up in the river beyond them. Planks connected all the barges, which by 1974 stretched far out into the Hudson River.

By the 1950s, the freight business overall was moving away from railroads and barges in a slow transition to trucks. The old life along the river began to die. The railroads started auctioning off their barges. Buyers in the market at the time weren’t interested in the freight business. During the 1960s, some barges were converted to living spaces , Bill said. He called their new owners  hippies.

The North Bergen politicians did not like the new barge people -Bill's hippies - because they used town services but paid no taxes. The mayor owned an apartment tower up the hill from the barges, and he wanted them out , Bill said. Soon enough, they were.

In 1971 a catastrophic fire swept across the community, destroying all of the habitable barges. Two of them belonged to Bill. He lost everything stored on them, including a lifetime of tools and two violins he had crafted himself. For the First time in 100 years, Bill said, there was no one living on the water at the foot of Bulls Ferry Rd.

In 1974, three years after that fire, there were only about 30 barges left. Fisherrmen and kids looking for adventure were the only regular visitors. But Bill still came every day from his house up the hill in Guttenberg to sit by the water and wait for someone to talk to. His wife of 50 years had died the previous year.

I don’t know if Bill was there the bitterly cold Friday in January of 1975, but someone was, and they set a fire. That fire took hold and spread quickly in a strong westerly wind. By evening the last remaining barges were involved. I saw the fire from Manhattan that Friday night. By the next morning, everything was gone, burned to the waterline. You can still see the barely submerged remnants of old wooden barges just off the riverbank, but I never saw Bill again.

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