From Dump To Wetlands In Jersey City

"In the strange territory called the Meadowlands, just west of Manhattan, a battered volcanic knob of rock juts up from the mudflats and reed thickets. Its history, like its name, is colorful. Snake Hill was once home to the indigent and the insane, and prisoners in the county jail here broke up the rock with sledgehammers. Its solidity once inspired a passing ad man to use “the rock” as the symbol of a great insurance company (though the concept somehow got refined along the way from Snake Hill to Gibraltar)."