History Commons^™

Documenting The Wooden Stick Lighter/Deck Scow Maricopa: A Vestige Of The Lighterage Era In The Port Of New York, Megan E. Springate

Megan E. Springate

In 2005, Richard Grubb & Associates mitigated the wreck of a wooden deck scow (an unpowered barge), abandoned in the Arthur Kill at Perth Amboy, Middlesex County, NJ. Built in 1923, the stick lighter MARICOPA was later converted to a deck scow. She served her entire career in New York Harbor, part of the large fleet of largely undocumented lighterage vessels that was critical to the area’s economy throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This discussion will include the MARICOPA’s mitigation, her role in the history of the area and the concept of significance applied to these vessel types.