Camp Merritt Memorial Monument
The Camp Merritt Memorial Monument marks the center of an important World War I embarkation camp. More than one million U.S. soldiers passed through the camp on their way to and from the battlefields of Europe.
Camp Merritt covered an area of 770 acres that included Cresskill, Demarest, Dumont, Haworth, and Tenafly. Strategically built between two major rail lines, the camp had a capacity of 42,000 men and contained 1,300 buildings of all uses.
In August 1919, the Bergen County Board of Commisioners purchased land for the monument. The 65ft-tall granite obelisk was formally dedicated on May 30, 1924 and is modeled after the Washington Monument in our nation’s capital. On the base are the names of the 578 people who died in the camp, mostly as a result of the 1918 worldwide influenza epidemic.
In the bottom section of the obelisk is a large Art Deco-style carved relief by the sculptor Robert Ingersoll Aitkin that depicts a striding “doughboy” with an eagle flying overhead. Set into a large boulder near the base of the obelisk is a copper plaque with a relief of the Palisades, alluding to Camp Merritt’s role as an embarkation point, designed and made by the local artist Katherine Lamb Tait. In the ground is a three-dimensional stone carving of the map of Camp Merritt. The monument sits in the middle of a busy traffic circle. Visitors are urged to use caution if crossing the traffic circle to enter the monument area.