During World War Two, 40,000 U.S. troops per month, including many Piermont residents, passed this spot en route to the end of Piermont Pier, the largest port of embarkation on the East Coast, where ships awaited transport to military duty in war-torn Europe. Many of these troops landed on the shores of France, where the invasion began on June 6, 1944, and the area became known as “Last Stop U.S.A.” After the war ended in victory, some 533,869 men returned home to the U.S.A., first setting foot on their homeland at the end of the same Piermont Pier, while many of the men who embarked from Piermont never returned.
