The Harsimus Branch Embankment is a massive, segmented stone structure that runs for six blocks through Downtown Jersey City parallel to Sixth Street. It was once part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system that connected the waterfront of Jersey City to the rest of the Country. The historic Embankment played a key role in shaping the Downtown and in the development of the Port of New York and New Jersey. With the resolution of long debated jurisdiction issues, it can now simultaneously protect the city's cultural heritage while helping to establish a new ecological identity.
The Embankment Preservation Coalition is working with the City of Jersey City and others to preserve the structure and its longer right of way for a habitat-oriented linear park, part of the East Coast Greenway Maine-to-Florida trail, and for potential light rail. The proposed project will characterize the ecological communities and compare these to existing soils data towards an understanding or the potential adaptive reuse of this past industrial infrastructure so critical to the revitalization of the "urban core" of Jersey City.