The Village of Piermont has some wonderfully rich history having been the first settlement in what is now Rockland County, New York.  Piermont was always a busy river landing and by 1783, this is where General George Washington and Lord Carleton met to discuss details of the British surrender to end the Revolutionary War. 

A century later, fashionable Piermont was the scene of thriving resort hotels and bathing pavilions where many urbanites from Manhattan came for rest and relaxation (some things haven’t changed).

* The Piermont Pier started life as a commercial pier servicing the many steamers and commercial vessels plying the Hudson River.  With an 1820's growth surge in steamboat business came the impetus to build a pier and road over the marshes. A 14-year project and thousand of laborers, the Pier was finally completed jutting out into the Hudson River for 1 mile.  In 1838, the Piermont pier became the terminus for the Erie Railroad, planned to serve New York's southern tier, starting in Rockland and reaching Lake Erie by 1851.

By the turn of the 20^th century, a paper mill was built on the pier making Piermont a proud company town for most of the 20th Century.  The Flywheel displayed in Flywheel Park is a memorable reminder of this thriving industry. 

During WWII, the pier was taken over by the US Government and used as the principal embarkation point of soldiers heading to Europe. 40,000 US troops per month, crossed the pier where ships were waiting to transport them to military duty in war-torn Europe. Piermont became known as the "Last Stop USA."   After the war was won, over half a million men returned home, across the same pier, first setting foot back in the US out in the middle of the Hudson River at the end of The Piermont Pier.  

 Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo" was filmed in Piermont 1985.  It continues to be a perfect location for movies.

The region in which Piermont is located stills has geologists perplexed.   Extensive geological studies have been conducted for many decades by some of the best scientists and investigators from Columbia University, Rutgers and Hofstra to name a few. These research studies have been conducted without reaching a consensus of the age of the glacial formations surrounding Piermont.  The big questions for these geologists lie with the connection between the Sparkill Gap (which runs along side of the Pier, the river and the igneous rocks forming the Palisades.  

The Piermont Pier includes the mouth of Sparkill Creek and extensive tidal shallows. The Sparkill Gap is the only sea level break in the Palisades Ridge. 

In 1982, NOAA's Office of Coastal Zone Management formally designated Piermont Marsh as part of a Federal Hudson River Estuarine Sanctuary to be administered by NYSDEC in cooperation with PIPC. The village of Piermont owns the pier.