For centuries, the Palisades, ancient columns of igneous rock rising hundreds of feet above the Hudson River, inspired poets and painters with their lofty grandeur. Quaint fishermen’s villages once dotted the shores below, while imposing estates occupied the heights above. By the 1890s, the rugged beauty of the Palisades was threatened by massive stone quarries that used dynamite to blast the cliffs into gravel for roadbeds and concrete. The New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs led the fight to save the Palisades, and in 1900 the governors of New York and New Jersey signed bills creating the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. The Commission bought out the quarries, turning twelve miles of Palisades riverfront into a unique natural playground. In the late 1920s, work began on an automobile bridge to cross the Hudson River from Upper Manhattan to New Jersey, and the Commissioners of the Palisades Interstate Park had to act quickly to protect the top of the cliffs from the rapid development sure to follow. The George Washington Bridge opened in October 1931. While the bridge was being built, John D. Rockefeller Jr. quietly bought more than 700 acres of the Palisades summit, including several cliff-top estates. In 1933, Rockefeller donated the properties he had acquired to the Park Commission on the condition that a scenic driveway be built to the Bear Mountain Bridge and that all manmade structures visible from across the river be removed.