[Weehawken, NJ]

Weehawken—said to be a Lenape Indian word meaning “maize land”—is a notorious spot in the life of Alexander Hamilton. It is home to the site of the duel that ended his life, and touched off one of the greatest political scandals in American history.

The exact location where the duel took place has technically been lost to the ages. Historical accounts relate that on this Hudson County, New Jersey, shore directly across from Manhattan there was once a jutting-out “shelf” of land not reachable from high ground above. It could only be accessed from a boat landing below at the edge of the cliff, making it an ideal spot to elude the intervention of law enforcement authorities and even eyewitnesses.

That made it a preferred venue for so-called affairs of honor, and historian David O. Stewart attested that dozens of bloody duels took place there, over and above the Hamilton-Burr duel and the duel in which Hamilton’s eldest son, Philip Hamilton, was killed in 1801.

In all likelihood, this precise spot where Vice President Aaron Burr faced off against and critically wounded Alexander Hamilton on July 11, 1804, was demolished during the installation of ventilation equipment for the Lincoln Tunnel, constructed in the mid 1930s.

A monument commemorating the duel now exists in the vicinity, and an urban legend poses that a rock on the site is where the dying Hamilton rested his head before being rowed back across the Hudson  to the William Bayard home where he languished and died the next day.