Historic Preservation: The Road to Remembering

HIGH ABOVE THE PATCHWORK QUILT FARMLANDS OF the Hudson Valley near Albany, New  York, sits John Boyd Thacher State Park, cresting miles of limestone cliff face and traveling deep into forests, down rocky slopes to grassy fields. It was here, as a child, where I first walked the Indian Ladder Trail with my dad. It was here where my love for the past was nurtured by the stories of the Mohawk Iroquois Indians who, several hundred years earlier, had walked a trail back and forth to Henry Hudson’s trading post. To scale the cliffs they felled tall trees against the cliff wall and cut back the branches, creating what the early settlers called Indian ladders.

In the late 1800s, philanthropist John Boyd Thacher established a summer residence in the area and purchased hundreds of acres of land, including more than a three-mile expanse of the cliff ledge. The Indian Ladder Trail and a number of other sites of natural and historic beauty were part of his estate; land which he made available to the public for their enjoyment. … (read the rest here:   

http://gardenstatelegacy.com/files/Historic_Preservation_Road_to_Remembering_Morrell_GSL11.pdf

Published in GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 11 • March 2011