Liberty State Park Guide: Views, Ferry Tips and History
The setting sun reflected in the Empty Sky 9-11 Memorial. Photos by John O’Boyle / The Empty Nest Explorers
If you're driving into New York City from the west, you just might want to make a stop at Liberty State Park, before you hit the Holland Tunnel. The park sits right on the harbor in Jersey City, and the views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the Lower Manhattan skyline are some of the best anywhere.
John and I know Liberty State Park well. Having both grown up in New Jersey, the park’s breezy waterfront path has long been one of our favorite local bike rides. It also is a “go to” spot for photographing the Statue of Liberty and we find that just being near the water on a beautiful day is a timeless joy.
Liberty State Park Quick Facts
Jersey City, New Jersey
| Entry | Free |
| Parking | Free in most lots. About $7 at the ferry lot and Liberty Science Center. |
| Getting there | NJ Turnpike to Exit 14B, then follow the park signs |
| GPS | 1 Audrey Zapp Drive for the north end. 200 Morris Pesin Drive for the south end. |
| Statue ferry | Leaves from the CRRNJ Terminal. About $26 for adults, covering both islands. |
| Best for | Skyline and Statue of Liberty views, biking, the Empty Sky Memorial |
| Time needed | 1 to 2 hours for a stop. At least half a day with the ferry. |
| In 2026 | Construction around the rail terminal. The park and ferry are open. |
Why Visit Liberty State Park
The two-mile waterfront promenade,
Most people know the park as the New Jersey starting point for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferry. There's a lot more here, though.
Liberty State Park packs a lot of history. The striking design of Empty Sky Memorial, which honors the New Jerseyans lost on 9/11, is worth seeing and the stately old rail terminal has a rich immigration connection in the American story. A bit more about the interesting history associated with Liberty State Park is explored further down this post.
Besides the two-mile long waterfront path, there are many nature trails to explore in this oasis of green in the midst of a very urban area. It might also surprise you to know that there is boating and canoeing on the Hudson River and New York Bay, plus picnic areas, playgrounds, food concessions, a Nature Center, areas for fishing and crabbing, and a marina.
And of course, there’s the awesome biking. 🙂 Nothing quite like biking the waterfront with Lady Liberty keeping watch on the horizon.
For another unique bike ride in the NYC/NJ metropolitan area, check out our Governors Island Guide.
Taking the Statue of Liberty ferry from New Jersey
The Statue of Liberty / Ellis Island ferry docks at Liberty State Park.
The ferry to Liberty Island and Ellis Island leaves from the historic CRRNJ Terminal at the north end of the park. Statue City Cruises is the only company allowed to dock at the islands, so skip any other sellers. Tickets run about $26 for adults, and one ticket covers both islands and their museums.
For drivers, this is a much easier trip than starting at Battery Park. You park a short walk from the terminal instead of hunting for a garage in Lower Manhattan.
You can buy tickets at the window inside the terminal. We'd still book online, especially if you want pedestal or crown access. When you book, make sure you pick New Jersey as your departure point.
Important Note: In some previous years, the ferry from Liberty State Park to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island has paused during the winter, so check the website first.
Statue of Liberty Ferry: New Jersey or New York?
Same boats, same ticket, same price
| Liberty State Park, NJ | Battery Park, NYC | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Drivers | Anyone coming by subway |
| Parking | Lot near the terminal, about $7 | No lot. Nearby garages often run $25 and up. |
| First stop | Ellis Island | Liberty Island |
| Tickets | Window inside the CRRNJ Terminal, or online | Castle Clinton, or online |
| Winter | Has paused from early January to early March in past years | Runs through the winter |
Driving directions and parking information for Liberty State Park
Driving Directions:
You can drive to Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey, by taking the New Jersey Turnpike to Exit 14B.
Follow the posted signs directing you toward Liberty State Park and the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
GPS Address: Use 1 Audrey Zapp Drive, Jersey City, NJ 07305 or 200 Morris Pesin Drive, depending on which part of the park you plan to visit first.
Parking Information:
Ample parking lots are available throughout the park for general use, as well as near major attractions like the historic Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal and the Liberty Science Center.
Parking in most of the areas is free. But if you are parking at the Ferry Terminal to take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, or at Liberty Science Center, there is a fee of about $7.
Where to Park at Liberty State Park
Pick your lot by what you want to see first
| Lot | Cost | Closest to |
|---|---|---|
| Ferry lot, Audrey Zapp Drive | About $7 | Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferry |
| End of Audrey Zapp Drive | Free, 2-hour limit | Empty Sky Memorial, CRRNJ Terminal, skyline photos |
| South lot, Morris Pesin Drive | Free | Black Tom flags, close views of the statue, the waterfront path |
| Liberty Science Center | About $7 | The science center and the light rail station |
The Empty Sky 9/11 Memorial
The sunset reflects off the walls of the Empty Sky 9/11 Memorial.
Perhaps one of the most heavily visited areas in the park is the striking Empty Sky 9/11 Memorial. I do think it is one of the most thoughtfully designed memorials of its kind.
Liberty State Park sits directly across the harbor from where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood. The memorial is constructed of two steel walls carrying the names of nearly 750 people with ties to New Jersey. These two walls point straight across the water to where the towers once stood.
In late afternoon, as the sun begins to set, you are surrounded by a bright ring of reflected light when facing west. It’s incredibly beautiful in its simplicity.
Empty Sky was designed by Jessica Jamroz and Frederic Schwartz and dedicated on the 10th anniversary in 2011. The twin steel walls are 210 feet long, matching the width of each tower's side, and the names are deep enough for hand rubbings.
On September 11, 2001, John was a photojournalist working a few hundred yards north of Liberty State Park. Boats of every kind carried people out of Lower Manhattan, and most came ashore at the ferry dock there. John remembers being helped by some young Egyptian immigrants who lived nearby and kindly let him use their phone line to send his photos into the newsroom.
Hundreds of ambulances from all over New Jersey lined up along Audrey Zapp Drive, ready to take the injured to hospitals. Sadly, most of them never had anyone to carry. Nearly everyone who got out that day walked away with minor injuries, and most of those who didn't make it out were never found.
Today, the Empty Sky Memorial stands beside the old rail terminal at the end of that same road. Standing near the old terminal, where millions of immigrants began their new lives, I always think of John’s stories of what he experienced that day.
If you are also going to explore the area around the 9/11 Memorial site in NYC, we have a lot of insight and information our post Visiting the attractions near the World Trade Center Memorial.
The historic CRRNJ Terminal
The abandoned section of the train terminal.
Stepping into the Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal at Liberty State Park is like walking directly into America’s golden age of rail. Built in 1889, this Richardsonian Romanesque landmark served as the literal gateway to a new life for an estimated 10.5 million immigrants who boarded trains here after processing through Ellis Island.
It’s all ironwork and skylights and just a very cool old building - something out of a romantic novel. It ceased operating as a real train station in 1967, but the old signs for familiar train lines are still there.
Tip: Look up your ancestors before you go
If your family came through Ellis Island, spend a few minutes searching for them before your visit. The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation has a free passenger database at StatueOfLiberty.org, with New York arrival records going back to 1820.
You'll get better results if you know their names, roughly when they arrived and about when they were born. Try different spellings too, since names were often written down differently back then.
If you find them, the ship's record can show where they came from, how old they were and who they were joining in America. Then when you stand in the old train terminal, you may be standing right where they caught their first train to a new life.
Black Tom Explosion Memorial
Almost unbelievably, 9/11 wasn’t the only tragic event witnessed from this spot of waterfront.
Most people who visit Liberty State Park have no idea they may be walking on the site of a wartime attack. And though I grew up in this area, this was something I didn’t know either until only a few years ago!
At the far southern end of the park, a circle of American flags is a well-known landmark right by the parking lot we often use when we come in for our bike rides. We’ve photographed these flags many, many times in all kinds of dramatic light, without being truly conscious of why they were there. I always figured it was due to the “bicentennial angle” - the park opened in 1976. But that’s not it.
I guess we only admired the flags from afar through our lenses, because what I never saw was the plaque in the center of the circle marks where Black Tom Island once stood.
In 1916, Black Tom was a busy railroad depot packed with ammunition waiting to be shipped to the Allies in Europe. The United States hadn't entered World War I yet. Early on the morning of July 30, German agents set fires on the pier, and at 2:08 AM more than 2 million pounds of explosives went up.
The blast was felt as far away as Philadelphia and shattered windows across Lower Manhattan. Immigrants on Ellis Island had to be evacuated. At least four people died, including a ten-week-old baby.
The Statue of Liberty, a little over half a mile away, was hit by flying debris. The damage to her arm is the reason the torch has been closed to visitors ever since.
The house where I lived in downtown Jersey City as a teenager had crooked staircases. It was a big sturdy brownstone of some age, and I never paid much mind to why the staircases might have been that way. But one of my sisters remembers our father saying something about it being “from the explosion”. .ah-ha..
I also have a distinct earlier memory of being perplexed by a particular window in my parish church, Our Lady of Czestochowa, not far from the waterfront. While stylistically it looked much the same as every other stained glass window in the church - saintly figures in halos and such - it had a date on it - 1916. Way past biblical times, right? It was a puzzle to me. No one ever explained what it represented, but perhaps if I would have been able to read the Polish words “Po Explozyi” (after the explosion) it might have made more sense to me. It does now.
After the war, investigators tied the attack to German agents, and Germany finally finished paying for the damage in 1979. The attack also pushed the country toward building its first domestic intelligence agencies.
The Black Tom marker is at the end of Morris Pesin Drive, a good distance from the ferry terminal, so it's easiest to drive or bike there. It's quiet down at that end of the park, and the view of the statue is one of the closest you'll get from New Jersey.
How Liberty State Park came to be
John and Debbie on a bike ride in Liberty State Park.
Though I was too young to care about the politics of it at the time, I do remember that the opening of Liberty State Park back in 1976 was a rather big deal. There was a lot of buzz around it being opened for the country’s bicentennial. But it was a work in progress for many years thereafter and in some ways - as with the massive new construction projects mentioned above - it still is.
The Jersey City waterfront pre-1976 was not a place you wanted to go. No one cared about it. At all. It's hard to picture now with how developed the area is, but this whole stretch of waterfront was once abandoned rail yards and just a dumping ground with packs of wild dogs roving about.
The park itself only exists because a few Jersey City residents fought for decades to save this waterfront. It’s almost astonishing with today’s real estate attitudes that such valuable property was left to rot. But perhaps views of the city and even Miss Liberty were simply not as appreciated.
In 1957, local businessman Morris Pesin took his family to see the Statue of Liberty. Even though the statue sits less than 2,000 feet from the Jersey City shore, the only way there at the time was a ferry from Manhattan, and the trip took hours.
The next year, Pesin made his point to the press by canoeing from Black Tom to the statue in 8 minutes. Interestingly, that's the same spot where John and I now park for our bike rides. The views from that parking lot are great.
Pesin teamed up with Audrey and Warren Zapp, preservationist Ted Conrad and historian J. Owen Grundy. It took years of work, but the park opened on Flag Day in 1976 as New Jersey's gift for the nation's 200th birthday. Today, the park's two main roads, Morris Pesin Drive and Audrey Zapp Drive, carry their names.
The fight didn't end there. Over the years, developers have floated ideas for this land ranging from a hotel to an amusement park. More recently, the billionaire owner of the private golf club next door spent years trying to expand onto Caven Point, a protected nature area, before backing off in 2020 after a public outcry.
Park advocates are still at it. Sam Pesin, Morris's son, leads the Friends of Liberty State Park, and a bill that would permanently protect the park from privatization is currently working its way through Trenton.
Photographing the skyline and the Statue of Liberty from Liberty State Park
Photographing the New York City skyline on a stormy night,
The northern section of Liberty State Park is across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan, and the southern section sits directly behind the Statue of Liberty, making it a natural spot for great photos.
If you park by the historic train station, you’ll be right at the best spot for close photos of the World Trade Center and Lower Manhattan. You’ll be right at the 9/11 Memorial, which is very photogenic.
If you park at the southern end of the park and walk toward the water, you’ll be just a few hundred yards behind the Statue of Liberty. You can also get one of John’s favorite photos right from the parking lot. You’ll see the World Trade Center framed by the trees at the edge of the lot.
Late afternoon and early evening are the best times to photograph from here as the light reflects off the buildings.
You can read more about photographing the NYC skyline in our post: Best spots to photograph the NYC skyline
One of our favorite photo spots near the parking lot on the southern side of Liberty State Park.
Liberty Science Center
Liberty Science Center is a world class interactive science museum that just happens to be located on western edge of Liberty State Park, near the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail station and major roadways like the New Jersey Turnpike (Exit 14B or 14C).
It is a must for anyone coming to this area with kids. We used to take our son there frequently when he was younger, he just loved it so much. It’s a very fun, hands on science experience that keeps its exhibits fresh. There’s enough there to interest the young at heart as well, but it is especially a win with kids. The center is also heavily engaged in educational programs and a STEM magnet academy high school is actually under construction right next door.
The building itself always reminds me of something out of Star Wars - half machine, half buzzing hive of functional shapes somehow cobbled together - maybe in space!. 🚀 You can see it from the NJ Turnpike and can almost hear John Williams’ familiar theme as you approach.
The Science Center features a state-of-the-art Planetarium (that’s the big round part of the building that makes it so distinctive, which was once an IMAX theater), as well as hundreds of hands-on exhibits across several floors, including a massive indoor climbing mesh challenge and live animal habitats.
Liberty Science Center is currently undergoing a massive construction project that will significantly update both the indoor and outdoor experiences. To give you an idea of the scale of the upgrade, they are calling it Project Supernova.
It is expected to take about 30 months to complete and will add more than 100,000 square feet of new outdoor space that will include animal habitats and gardens, plus a new larger indoor gallery for major traveling exhibits.
The museum remains open to the public during construction. Check their website for news and updates before you go.
Construction at Liberty State Park in 2026
Liberty State Park turned 50 this year, and the state is celebrating with some long-overdue upgrades. If you visit this fall, expect to see construction around the historic rail terminal.
The plaza that connects the terminal, the Empty Sky Memorial and the waterfront walkway is being rebuilt to make it easier to get around. The state expects it to reopen later in 2026.
We saw fencing up everywhere on our most recent bike ride at the end of this summer, but it didn’t impede us from getting around, so it isn’t something you really need to “plan for”, but the work sounds interesting.
The project we're most excited about is the old train shed next to the terminal. It has been closed to visitors since the park opened in 1976. The terminal itself has been open for a long time, but the train shed - where the tracks are - have not been open or in use since it actually carried trains into the terminal, which stopped happening in 1967.
The first phase will open part of the shed as a covered gathering space with history exhibits. Given that millions of immigrants passed through here after Ellis Island, it should be something special. The 20-track train shed is described as the largest of its kind ever built, and the terminal operated until 1967.
A new ferry landing is also being built beside the terminal. The Statue of Liberty ferry is still running from the park during the work, but we'd check the Statue City Cruises site before you go.
Longer term, the state plans to clean up and restore a fenced-off interior area of the park, which covers more than 230 acres and has been closed for decades due to an industrial cleanup effort. That habitat rehabilitation project will add wetlands, trails and wildlife viewing areas, with construction scheduled to begin in 2027.
Looking for other fun things to do in New Jersey?
We love our home state and have some great ideas for you:
Liberty State Park FAQs
Is Liberty State Park free?
Yes. There is no entrance fee, and parking is free in most of the lots. You’ll pay about $7 to park at the ferry lot or at Liberty Science Center.
Can you see the Statue of Liberty from Liberty State Park?
You can, and from closer than most people expect. The south end of the park, off Morris Pesin Drive, sits just a few hundred yards behind her. You are looking at her back from here, since she faces out toward the harbor.
Can you take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty from New Jersey?
Yes. Statue City Cruises leaves from the old CRRNJ Terminal at the north end of the park. Tickets run about $26 for adults and cover both islands. The boat from New Jersey stops at Ellis Island first, then goes on to Liberty Island.
Is it better to take the Statue of Liberty ferry from New Jersey or New York?
If you’re driving, we’d pick New Jersey every time. You park a short walk from the terminal for about $7. The ticket and the price are the same on both sides. Battery Park makes more sense if you’re already in Manhattan and getting around by subway.
How long does the Statue of Liberty ferry trip take?
Statue City Cruises says a straight-through visit to both islands takes about two hours. We’d plan on at least half a day if you want time in the museums. Try to board before 2 PM, because later boats don’t leave enough time for both islands.
Does the New Jersey ferry run all year?
The ferry doesn’t run on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. In past winters, the New Jersey departures have also paused from early January to early March. If you’re visiting in winter, check the Statue City Cruises schedule before you drive over.
How do you get to Liberty State Park without a car?
The Hudson-Bergen Light Rail stops at Liberty State Park station, near Liberty Science Center. From there it’s about a mile to the terminal and the waterfront. From Lower Manhattan, the Liberty Landing Ferry runs between Brookfield Place and the park.
How much time do you need at Liberty State Park?
An hour or two is enough to see the Empty Sky Memorial, walk through the terminal and take in the skyline. Give it longer if you want to bike the waterfront or get down to the Black Tom flags at the south end.
When is the best time to photograph the skyline from Liberty State Park?
Late afternoon into early evening. The sun is behind you then, and the light bounces off the buildings in Lower Manhattan.
Why is the Statue of Liberty’s torch closed?
It goes back to the Black Tom explosion in 1916. Flying debris from the blast damaged her arm, and the torch has been closed to visitors ever since. The marker for Black Tom is at the south end of the park.
About the Authors
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John and Debbie O'Boyle are the team behind The Empty Nest Explorers. John is a professional photographer whose work has been published by The New York Times, NBC News, and Getty Images. He is a member of the American Society of Media Photographers, has been part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team, and has received two New York Emmy nominations. Debbie is a writer and photographer with 30+ years of experience, formerly with The Star-Ledger and NJ.com. Together, they create in-depth travel guides for couples and empty-nest travelers who want to make the most of every destination. |
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John and I both grew up in New Jersey, and Liberty State Park has long been one of our favorite local bike rides.
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