Newark Bay : NYC Tourist Guide

Newark Bay

Newark Bay is a body of water, a tidal back bay of New York Harbor formed at the confluence of the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers. On its south end, it is connected to Upper New York Bay by the Kill Van Kull, as well as to Raritan Bay by the Arthur Kill. It contains the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal.
It is enclosed on the west by the New Jersey cities of Newark and Elizabeth, and on the east by Jersey City and Bayonne. It is enclosed on the south by Staten Island.
It contains Shooters Island, which is part of the borough of Staten Island.
The western edge of Newark Bay was originally shallow tidal wetlands covering approximately 12 square miles. In 1914 the City of Newark began excavating an angled shipping channel in the northeastern quadrant of the wetland which formed the basis of Port Newark. Work on the channel and terminal facilities on its north side accellerated during World War I, when the federal government took control of Port Newark. Shipping operations languished during the interwar years, and in 1927, the City of Newark started construction of Newark Airport on the northwest quadrant of the wetlands which lay between Port Newark and the edge of the developed city. A north-south causeway containing the tracks of the Jersey Central Railroad and the Lincoln Highway (now the N.J. Turnpike)separated the airport from the seaport.
The Port of New York Authority (now the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) took over the operations of Port Newark and the Newark Airport in 1948 and began modernizing and expanding both facilities southward. In 1958, the Port Authority dredged another shipping channel which straightened the course of Bound Brook, the tidal inlet forming the boundary between Newark and Elizabeth. Dredged materials was used to create new upland south of the new Elizabeth Channel, where the Port Authority constructed the Elizabeth Marine Terminal. The first shipping facility to open upon the Elizabeth Channel was the new 90-acre Sea-Land Container Terminal, which was the prototype for virtually every other container terminal constructed thereafter.
Although a shallow tidal estuary, it is periodically dredged to accommodate ocean-going container ship access to Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal along its western side.
It is spanned by the Vincent R. Casciano Memorial Bridge connecting Bayonne and Newark.