The story of how Englewood Cliffs has emerged from a Revolutionary Map point to a modern, model residential and business community provides many colorful threads in the history of Englewood Cliffs.

In November, 218 years ago, the site the Borough now occupies was the scene of an heroic encounter that changed the course of our nation. An unknown farmer riding from the north over our cliffs warned General Washington’s men, camped on the crest of the Palisades at Fort Lee, that the British were coming. The early warning allowed Washington to make his successful strategic retreat and thus avoid confronting the numerically superior British force. General Washington’s small group of brave but ill-equipped and trained patriots would surely have been defeated. Had General Washington been captured as planned by British general Cornwallis, it is conceivable that the Revolution War would have been lost.

After the Revolutionary War, part of the waterfront beneath our cliffs became the shipping port of the northern valley farmers who sent great quantities of their produce to New York. At the time, it was one of the key seaports of the East.

One of the greatest challenges to the development of Englewood Cliffs was the effect the George Washington Bridge would have on a small town. The resultant real estate boom, as expected was colossal. In 1931 opening of the bridge coincided with the adoption of the Borough’s first building and zoning code, some of the wisest regulations ever to be set down on paper. These were the early blocks that made a community of one-family houses without high-rise apartments able to coexist with business and industry on what was to be later labeled the “Trillion Dollar Mile” of business and international corporation offices on Sylvan Avenue.