New York Harbor near Jersey City, New Jersey.
New York Harbor, a geographic term, refers collectively to the rivers, bays, and tidal estuaries near the mouth of the Hudson River in the vicinity of New York City.
This is sometimes construed in the sense the Ports of New York and New Jersey.
More narrowly, the term occasionally refers only to Upper New York Bay.
In the broad sense, the term includes the following bodies of water and their waterfronts: Upper New York Bay, Lower New York Bay, North River (i.e. the lowest part of the Hudson River), East River, Kill Van Kull, Newark Bay, Arthur Kill, The Narrows, Jamaica Bay, Raritan Bay, and Harlem River.
This includes about 1,200 square miles (3,100 km2), with over a 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of shoreline.
At peak it contained 650 miles (1,046 km) of developed waterfront in 11 individual, active ports in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Perth Amboy, Elizabeth, Bayonne, Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken, and Weehawken.
Although the U.S. Board of Geographic Names does not include the term, New York Harbor has important historical, governmental, commercial, and ecological usages.
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Nautically, the Harbor consists of a complex of about 240 miles (386 km) of shipping channels (requiring pilotage), as well as anchorages and port facilities, centered on the Upper New York Bay.
Larger vessels require tugboat assistance for the sharper channel turns, for example from Kill van Kull into Port Newark.
The Harbor has the main entrance from the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, between the Rockaway Point and Sandy Hook; it has another entrance via the Long Island Sound from the northeast at the outlet of the East River.
The Harbor extends to the southwest to the mouth of the Raritan River, to the northwest at Port Newark and to the north to the George Washington Bridge.
Other vehicular routes cross the Harbor include the PATH tunnel and lower down the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.
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