PALISADES INTERSTATE PARK COMMISSION
2005 HONOREE
Environmentalism
The Palisades Interstate Park Commission (PIPC) was chosen as recipient of the 2005 Russel Wright Award for Environmentalism. The PIPC was founded in 1900 by the states of New York and New Jersey to acquire and protect the unique and dramatic Palisades cliffs stretching for 30 miles along the western bank of the Hudson River. Over its 100 year history, the PIPC has grown to a 100,000 acre park system with jurisdiction over 24 state parks and eight historic sites, including Bear Mountain State Park and Storm King Mountain State Park, key protected lands of the west bank of the Hudson Highlands. In the 1960's, Russel Wright worked with the PIPC creating a landscape design and summer camp programs. In the 1980's, the Commission played an important role in the establishment of Manitoga.
"The Palisades Interstate Park Commission plays a premier role in preserving the environment and natural beauty of the Hudson River Valley, its Palisades and Highlands," said Capitman. "The PIPC benefits from a strong blending of public and private funding starting with the original gifts of John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt and other business leaders of the Gilded Age before World War I. Key families, including George W. Perkins, his son, grandson, granddaughter-in-law and granddaughter and generations of Rockefellers and Harrimans, served almost continuously as PIPC Commissioners. In recent years, the PIPC led exhaustive public campaigns to gain control of the dwindling stock of undeveloped Hudson Valley land. This culminated in the 20,000 acre Sterling Forest acquisition in the late 1990's, which achieved its funding goals with public monies from the Federal, New York State and New Jersey State governments and with key contributions from The Nature Conservancy, the Open Space Institute and numerous other foundations and organizations," Capitman continued. "In many ways, Manitoga's program and mission parallels the PIPC on a much smaller scale. Our hiking trails, summer Nature and Design Camp and the restoration and preservation of Russel Wright's home and studio are very similar to PIPC programs, which is why we applaud this institution so enthusiastically," he concluded.
Carol Ash, Executive Director of the PIPC accepted the Russel Wright Award for the Commission. "As the Palisades Interstate Park Commission has done since its creation in 1900, Russel Wright savored the land's natural forms while he revitalized it," Ash observed. "His meticulous intellectual design has left us an environment that remains faithful to its creation, a wonderland for its visitors that shows off its most interesting features; its natural contours, enormous boulders, hemlock groves, sunny fields, spectacular vistas and water, Wright, with his own hands, created at Manitoga a simple, but ultimately delightful world," the PIPC Executive Director concluded.
The Palisades Interstate Park Commission (PIPC) is a bi-state organization overseeing public lands in New York and New Jersey that together comprise the Palisades park system. Governors Theodore Roosevelt of New York and Foster Voorhees of New Jersey joined the cause, and in 1900, the two state legislatures created PIPC. The interstate agreement was forged in an effort to preserve the natural landscape of the Palisades region for future generations, and the commission set about acquiring land along the river for public parks. In 1937, the US Congress authorized a federal charter to merge the two state creations into one entity. The Commission is made up of ten commissioners, five appointed by each Governor, who serve staggered five-year terms. The organization's stewardship mission has been expanded beyond the cliffs to a larger area of land along the Hudson River and westward around the New Jersey and New York border. The Palisades park system now includes twenty-four parks and eight historic sites, covering over 100,000 acres in eight counties (Bergen, Passaic, Morris and Warren in New Jersey, and Rockland, Orange, Sullivan and Webster in New York.). The park system has a wide variety of recreational facilities, museums and nature centers, and hosts nine million visit a year.