Monday, January 30, 2012
The First Americans, 1: Asiatic Origins
HISTORY
Today’s American Indian population of more than 2.8 million counted in the 2010 Census is in sharp contrast to the native population in 1609, the year Henry Hudson sailed up the river that bears his name. The entire North American continent was then the exclusive domain of Indians.
A mere hundred years later, the Indian tribes of the Hudson Valley
Some Hudson Valley tribes found their way to Massachusetts , others to upstate New York , Pennsylvania , Ohio and Indiana Wisconsin or to Ontario in Canada
A similar extinction drama was played out in the Massachusetts Bay colony after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Oklahoma
Indians owe their name to a monumental gaffe committed by Christopher Columbus five centuries ago. Thinking he had reached India
Eventually, it was recognized that he had not reached Asia but had discovered an unknown continent. By then, the word "Indian" or a close variant had entered the major languages of the world.
To rectify Columbus
The Land Bridge
Originating in Asia, ancestors of the so-called Native Americans are believed to have reachedAlaska from Siberia by a land bridge exposed in shallow Bering Strait . Geologists refer to the twin areas of Russia east of the Lena River and northwestern North America west of longitude 130 degrees as Beringia.
The Land Bridge
Originating in Asia, ancestors of the so-called Native Americans are believed to have reached
Although not very likely in a warming planet, a drop of only 120 feet in today's ocean level today would create a land bridge again and reveal the link from one continent to another. It seems clear the first Americans arrived in what is North America well before the last major glaciation and then made their way southward. Hugging the shoreline along the still ice-covered part of the continent, they depended on fish and shell fish for sustenance.
Evidence of their passage along the ocean strand may exist under shallow Pacific coastal waters. Robert Ballard, explorer of the Titanic wreck, has indicated an interest in such a project.
Their migration was for the most basic of reasons: food. Once past the southern limit of glacial ice, these hunter-gatherers traveled inland in small bands, moving with the game that supplied them with meat and furs.
Always seeking new regions where animals and plants were plentiful, they explored ever southward as the climate moderated. Taking whatever a bountiful nature offered, they made no effort to increase or propagate their food supply by domesticating animals or rising crops.
Eventually, wandering groups reached the southernmost tip of South America . Excavations at the Monte Verde site in Chile Americas
Nevertheless, by traveling as little as three miles a week, the distance between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego could have been covered in about 70 years. Along the way, mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths as large as elephants, and other animals all fell victim to their primitive flint-tipped spears.
Unlike later Indian hunters, who killed only as much as they needed for food, clothing and shelter, their Ice Age forbears killed wantonly. Ironically, by slaughtering their quarry in mass kills they hastened the extinction of the very animals upon which they depended.
Two such animals were the camel and the horse, once common on the plains of western America Bering Strait land bridge for migration--but in the opposite direction.
Spreading westward across Asia , the primitive wild horse of the steppes was eventually domesticated. When Indians encountered mounted Spanish explorers in 1539, all memory of earlier horses had been lost, and they regarded the strange new animals with awe. Once introduced to the horse, however, the Plains Indians quickly adapted to an equine way of life.
Old vs. New Worlds
Old vs. New Worlds
At some time after 11,000 years ago, rising sea levels cut off the Bering Strait land bridge, blocking the passage of Stone Age peoples. That the Indians who occupied the New World were still living in the Stone Age when Columbus
What was it that kept Indians from matching the growth of civilizations of the Old World ?
First and foremost, the Indians had remained non-literate. Developed in the fertile Mesopotamian plain as an adjunct to trade and government, writing and reading gave the Old World an initial leap forward. These two skills led to logical thought, mathematics, science, medicine and invention. Useful arts followed: engineering, dam-building, irrigation, intensive agriculture, ceramics and metallurgy.
Cities became states and nations with stratified social and economic hierarchies. These record-keeping bureaucracies were regulated by a judiciary and a priesthood, and governed by a ruling minority.
In contrast, the Indian lifestyle of foraging, hunting, fishing and farming limited them to small groups of families and clans gathered in temporary camps and small villages. Their only political organizations were tribes and loose confederacies.
Unlike the sheep, goats, cattle, horses, donkeys and camels of the Old World , with the exception of the dog, the animals available to the Indians did not lend themselves to domestication. In northern Europe , even reindeer and elk were tamed and harnessed.
Lacking domestic animals, Indians in the Western Hemisphere were largely doomed to continuing their nomadic lifestyle. Without draft animals and the plow, their attempts at raising crops necessarily were rudimentary. And without beasts of burden and wheels to provide transport, possessions other than the most portable tools and utensils quickly became impediments to a wandering lifestyle.
Editor’s Note: Look for the second part of this series, “The First Americans, 2: An Inevitable Conflict of Cultures.”
Labels: History, Native Americans
Monday, December 05, 2011
The Bridge Nobody Wanted
LOWER HUDSON VALLEY
The Bear Mountain Bridge Albany
But ferry service was woefully inadequate. Ferries were agonizingly slow. They took time to load and unload. And they were subject to frequent delays. When ice choked the river in winter, ferry service ground to a halt
Long waits at ferry slips were common on weekends and holidays. "Even the hotels in the river towns cannot take care of the stranded ones when there is a glut of traffic. People have been known to sleep out in their cars all night," The New York Times reported.
Early in February of 1922, the Legislature at Albany passed and Governor Nathan Lewis signed a bill chartering a private corporation to construct a toll bridge across the Hudson River "near the village of Peekskill
. Incorporated with a capitalization of $5 million and headed by E. Roland Harriman, the newly formed Bear Mountain Hudson River Bridge Company had three years to build the bridge and its access road on land owned by the state, and 30 years to operate it before it would become the property of the state. During that period, New York
Opposition Surfaces
From the start, the 1922 bridge proposal faced hostility. Veterans of successful battles for the preservation of the Palisades and theHighlands were loud in their condemnation of the proposed design. Writing in the influential magazine The Outlook, Lawrence F. Abbott scorned the bridge. "With all due respect, it looks, in its wonderful setting of mountains and river, like a piece of tin frumpery.”
Opposition Surfaces
From the start, the 1922 bridge proposal faced hostility. Veterans of successful battles for the preservation of the Palisades and the
The influential New York Times entered the fray with an editorial titled, "An Infliction of Ugliness on the Hudson
The anonymous editorial writer went on: "Ugly bridges, indeed, have been built in ancient and modern times, but they are so few that apparently it is easier to make them beautiful than ugly and that to attain ugliness no small amount of ingenuity and determination must be misapplied."
The New York Times editorial concluded: "There is no excuse at all, consequently, for what is about to happen near one of the most admirable manifestation of natural beauty in the vicinity of this city, and in this part of the country, for that matter--the erection of a bridge across the Hudson that will be an offense to the eye as long as it stands."
Construction Begins
Despite the widespread howls of disapproval from environmentalists, construction of theBear Mountain Bridge
Despite the widespread howls of disapproval from environmentalists, construction of the
Completing the 2.5-mile access road to the bridge required excavating and moving 21,000 cubic yards of soil and rock, and the construction of 11,000 cubic yards of masonry retaining wall.
To add to the complexity of the road building, the New York Central Railroad tracks lay directly below a mile-long section of the highway. Safety of the rail line imposed extraordinary precautions.
The Carey Construction Company built the road in the surprising time of seven months. To this day, the road offers breathtaking vistas and sheer drops of 400 feet.
John A. Roebling’s Sons Company of Trenton , N.J.
The Roebling Company was the most experienced bridge builder in the nation, having produced cables for the 1883 Brooklyn Bridge and other bridges, including the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges in New York City.
A World Record
A World Record
Spinning the bridge support cables took a record-breaking 13 weeks. With the addition of bridge girders and a concrete deck, 1,632-foot Bear Mountain Bridge became the longest suspension bridge in the world, exceeding by 32 feet New York City ’s Williamsburg Bridge
It would hold that record only for two years before being surpassed in 1926 by theBenjamin Franklin Bridge over the Delaware River linking Philadelphia and Camden , N.J.
It would hold that record only for two years before being surpassed in 1926 by the
Although the Bear Mountain Bridge Westchester in 1931: the graceful 750-foot steel arch bridge that now carries the northbound Taconic State Parkway across the Croton Reservoir.
Built by the Mount Vernon Bridge Company for the Westchester County Park Commission, Baird’s bridge employs an ingenious three-hinged design. By 1970, increased use of the Taconic required the construction of an adjoining bridge—an unexciting traditional deck-truss design that carries southbound traffic.
Opening Day
The first informal automobile crossing of theBear Mountain Bridge
The first informal automobile crossing of the
Official opening ceremonies took place on November 26th. Led by the band from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, four hundred automobiles assembled in Peekskill and drove slowly along the highway that had been blasted into the steep sides of Manitou Mountain and Anthony's Nose, and then across the bridge.
At the western end, a bronze tablet was unveiled by Mary A. Harriman, generous donor of much of Harriman State Park
The following day, Thanksgiving Day, the Bear Mountain Bridge
Fares wee collected at the western end of the bridge and at a toll house on the access road. Passenger cars and drivers paid 80 cents. Cars with wheelbases longer than 100 inches were charged one dollar. Each additional passenger cost ten cents. Pedestrians paid ten cents to walk across.
These rates, the result of unrealistic monopoly pricing, were high in comparison with ferry rates—and remained high even during the years of the Great Depression.
Once the novelty wore off, however, bridge traffic declined. From opening day in 1924 to 1940, the Bear Mountain Bridge
In a February 1940 letter to Governor Herbert H. Lehman, Robert Moses, then Chairman of the State Council of Parks, pointed out the importance of the Bear Mountain Bridge: "It is unnecessary to emphasize the interest of the State Park Council in this bridge, which is one of the main approaches to Bear Mountain Park and to the entire Palisades Interstate Park system.”
In April of 1940, the Legislature passed a bill authorizing the purchase of the Bear Mountain Bridge
The first change made by the new owner was the immediate reduction of motor vehicle tolls to a flat 50 cents regardless of the number of occupants. This was later reduced to 35 cents in 1942 and 25 cents in 1945. In 1970, the Bridge Authority doubled tolls and imposed them only in the eastbound direction. The toll today is one dollar.
Over the years, the starkly beautiful Bear Mountain Bridge , like the Eiffel Tower
Labels: History, Lower Hudson Valley
Monday, October 10, 2011
Those Were the Days, 3: Homage to the Concord
HISTORY
Stagecoaches were the common form of transport on roads in the 19th century. Coaches provided the glue that held the young nation together by bringing news and mail to remote communities. For those isolated on lonely farms, a gaily-decorated coach speeding by regularly was a reassuring link with the outside world that lessened the pangs of solitude
The Rolls Royce of coaches was the Concord. Built in the New Hampshire town of that name on the banks of the Merrimack River, the Concord was a unique product of Yankee ingenuity combined with loving craftsmanship. Of the 3,700 Concords painstakingly built by hand in the shops of Abbot-Downing & Company, only about a hundred have survived.
Concord Beginnings
Lewis Downing, a wheelwright, launched the business in 1813, the year he sold his first wagon for $60. In 1826, He decided to construct stagecoaches and hired J. Stephens Abbot, a journeyman coachbuilder, to assist him. When New Hampshire innkeeper John Shepard decided to start a stage line and purchased Downing and Abbot’s first Concord coach, it launched a new era in road travel.
Until then, the traditional egg-shaped British coach was the standard on rough American roads. Not only was it heavy, it was top-heavy and turned over easily. Downing and Abbot’s new design was a radical departure. They flattened the top of their coach and made the body wider and roomier, with space for nine passengers. Like the Jeep of World War II, the carrying capacity of a Concord was almost without limit. In a pinch, additional passengers could ride on top.
At the front and rear were the boots—leather cargo compartments that could swallow mailbags, express boxes, passengers’ luggage, and even an occasional stowaway. A team of two or four horses or mules provided motive power.
Bright colors reflected the tastes of the time for vivid decoration. The body was often painted a gaudy English vermilion. Running gear—wheels, axles and the shaft, or “pole”—were straw yellow. After applying several coats of paint, each painstakingly hand-rubbed with pumice, two coats of spar varnish were added. The intricate scrollwork carved by Charles Knowlton was gilded. Miniature landscapes or portraits graced the doors, with no two alike. Abbot-Downing brought artist John Burgum from England to be the firm’s master coach decorator.
Weighing a little more than a ton, this masterpiece of the coach maker’s art could cost as much as two thousand dollars, a considerable sum when the average wage was only a few dollars a week.
A unique suspension system was another reason for the Concord’s success. Unlike British coaches, its body was not attached to the axles by rigid metal leaf springs that broke easily. Instead, the Concord was cradled between the wheels on a dozen long and wide strips of rawhide three to four inches thick, laced or riveted together.
Called “thorough braces,” these are usually described as leather springs to ease the bumps and jolts of the road on the passengers. That was indeed one outcome, but their real function was to act as shock absorbers for the benefit of the team pulling the coach. Thanks to the moderating qualities of the thorough braces, the horses felt no violent jerks. The gently rocking coach body enabled them to surmount difficult obstacles.
Equally important in relieving the animals of shocks from rough roads was the style of loose hitching favored by American stage drivers. Breast straps and traces were connected with plenty of freedom, as contrasted with the tight hitching of English coachmen. Although passengers in the coach might be experiencing a swaying ride, a loosely harnessed team could concentrate on steady pulling and arrive in fresh condition. Comfort of passengers was secondary to care of livestock.
Stage Lines Appear
Primitive early stages were dubbed “hack wagons” or “mud wagons,” and a wagon is what they were--hard-riding, bone-jarring, metal-spring wagons with bench seats and a canvas top. When the Concord made its appearance, it was an instant sensation. It also brought a significant change in mail-carrying patterns.
For more than a century, post riders had carried letters in their saddlebags over the post roads of the colonies. In 1785, the government awarded the contract to carry the mails over the Boston Post Road to a stage line formed by Levi Pease and Reuben Sykes. Mail contracts required that passengers also be carried.
The first Concord reached California in 1850 via Cape Horn. With the opening of overland routes to the goldfields, demand grew. A single order in 1867 from Wells, Fargo & Company for 30 “elegant coaches” took a year to complete. The train that brought them to Omaha from New Hampshire consisted of 15 flatcars carrying the coaches and four boxcars with 60 sets of four-horse leather harnesses, plus spare parts.
Other coaches were shipped to Mexico, South America, South Africa and Australia, and earned praise for their sturdiness and dependability. Concord coaches also gained a reputation for being able to go anywhere. An eight-horse team once pulled a Concord to the top of the tallest peak in the Northeast, New Hampshire’s 6,288-foot-high Mt. Washington.
Lewis Downing’s business philosophy was to seek no more business than he could supervise himself. There was no “standard” Concord; all were individually built by hand to the customer’s specifications and marked with an identifying number.
A competitor of the Concord, the Troy coach, manufactured in Troy, N.Y., by coach makers Charles Veazie and Orsamus Eaton, never attained the popularity of the Concord. Its makers also built railroad passenger coaches.
The Stage Driver
On eastern roads, the usual crew of a stagecoach was one: the laconic, hard-drinking, tobacco-chewing driver, idol of all small boys. Holdups were unlikely, and no shotgun-toting guard was necessary. Unlike the West, where the cargo was often gold bullion and currency, Eastern banks and businesses used checks and bills of exchange of little value to a highwayman.
Dressed in his working outfit, with his wide-brimmed beaver hat, greatcoat and calfskin boots, the stage driver was an imposing sight. In winter, drivers favored coats of fur or buffalo hide and hand knit stockings imported from Canada. Like his flannel underwear, a driver’s stockings were always red, a color thought to be warmer than other colors. To complete his garb, the driver wrapped his waist with a tasseled silk sash, bright red and tied on the left. In winter, the sash was of knitted wool.
The badge of the stage driver’s calling was his whip. Measuring seventeen and a half feet from the end of the handle to the tip of the lash, a crack of this whip sounded like a pistol shot. Another piece of standard equipment carried by coaches was the long, tapered tin horn with which the driver announced his arrival at each settlement.
Much of what we know of the life of a stage driver comes to us from the writing of a remarkable woman, Anne Royall, the country’s first female reporter and editor. She spent much of her life crisscrossing the country in stagecoaches and writing about her experiences.
Stage drivers, lumberjacks, river boatmen and canal laborers were among the lustiest consumers of alcohol. The men engaged in these occupations were members of a new, mobile class without habitual conventions, roots or social ties. Despite its romantic allure, the life of a stage driver was hard, often boring. Much of his time was spent at a tavern waiting for sufficient passengers or cargo to make a trip. On the road he drove over deeply rutted tracks, soaked with rain and splattered by mud, or chilled by wind or snow.
Although he might live in a town, the stage driver worked under wretched conditions on the road, alone and remote from family and friends. His work was detached from much of society. Many of his passengers were rude and unreasonable types who cursed him for jostling them. Not surprisingly, drivers turned to alcohol, taking a drink whenever they stopped to water their horses at a tavern.
On one long trip, Anne Royall noted that only one driver had not publicly consumed alcohol on the road. “It was well the horses were sober,” she concluded. So prevalent was drinking at every stage stop, one foreign observer wrote in 1834, “The American stagecoach stops every five miles to water the horses and brandy the gentlemen.”
The End of the Concord
The spreading rail network restricted stagecoach travel and movement of the mails to remote areas. Fortunately for Abbot-Downing, hotels in cities and at summer resorts still found Concords ideal for transporting guests to and from train stations.
It was the automobile, first called a “horseless carriage,” that sealed the doom of horse-drawn vehicles. Even so, Abbot-Downing did not surrender without a fight. The company kept going with repair work and the manufacture of replacement parts. After 1915, it built motor truck bodies in a factory in Long Island City, N.Y. In 1928, a century after the first Concord was crafted, the firm was dissolved.
The Concord is gone from the scene now, but it should be remembered not as the dusty, dried-up antique of roadside tourist museums, or as the drab and worn replica in John Ford Westerns. A speeding Concord pulled by a team of eager, spirited horses in the hands of an expert driver was a thing of beauty, as exciting to any landlubber as a clipper ship under full sail was to a lover of the sea. There were no two ways about it: The Concord was indeed the queen of the road.
Stagecoaches were the common form of transport on roads in the 19th century. Coaches provided the glue that held the young nation together by bringing news and mail to remote communities. For those isolated on lonely farms, a gaily-decorated coach speeding by regularly was a reassuring link with the outside world that lessened the pangs of solitude
The Rolls Royce of coaches was the Concord. Built in the New Hampshire town of that name on the banks of the Merrimack River, the Concord was a unique product of Yankee ingenuity combined with loving craftsmanship. Of the 3,700 Concords painstakingly built by hand in the shops of Abbot-Downing & Company, only about a hundred have survived.
Concord Beginnings
Lewis Downing, a wheelwright, launched the business in 1813, the year he sold his first wagon for $60. In 1826, He decided to construct stagecoaches and hired J. Stephens Abbot, a journeyman coachbuilder, to assist him. When New Hampshire innkeeper John Shepard decided to start a stage line and purchased Downing and Abbot’s first Concord coach, it launched a new era in road travel.
Until then, the traditional egg-shaped British coach was the standard on rough American roads. Not only was it heavy, it was top-heavy and turned over easily. Downing and Abbot’s new design was a radical departure. They flattened the top of their coach and made the body wider and roomier, with space for nine passengers. Like the Jeep of World War II, the carrying capacity of a Concord was almost without limit. In a pinch, additional passengers could ride on top.
At the front and rear were the boots—leather cargo compartments that could swallow mailbags, express boxes, passengers’ luggage, and even an occasional stowaway. A team of two or four horses or mules provided motive power.
Bright colors reflected the tastes of the time for vivid decoration. The body was often painted a gaudy English vermilion. Running gear—wheels, axles and the shaft, or “pole”—were straw yellow. After applying several coats of paint, each painstakingly hand-rubbed with pumice, two coats of spar varnish were added. The intricate scrollwork carved by Charles Knowlton was gilded. Miniature landscapes or portraits graced the doors, with no two alike. Abbot-Downing brought artist John Burgum from England to be the firm’s master coach decorator.
Weighing a little more than a ton, this masterpiece of the coach maker’s art could cost as much as two thousand dollars, a considerable sum when the average wage was only a few dollars a week.
A unique suspension system was another reason for the Concord’s success. Unlike British coaches, its body was not attached to the axles by rigid metal leaf springs that broke easily. Instead, the Concord was cradled between the wheels on a dozen long and wide strips of rawhide three to four inches thick, laced or riveted together.
Called “thorough braces,” these are usually described as leather springs to ease the bumps and jolts of the road on the passengers. That was indeed one outcome, but their real function was to act as shock absorbers for the benefit of the team pulling the coach. Thanks to the moderating qualities of the thorough braces, the horses felt no violent jerks. The gently rocking coach body enabled them to surmount difficult obstacles.
Equally important in relieving the animals of shocks from rough roads was the style of loose hitching favored by American stage drivers. Breast straps and traces were connected with plenty of freedom, as contrasted with the tight hitching of English coachmen. Although passengers in the coach might be experiencing a swaying ride, a loosely harnessed team could concentrate on steady pulling and arrive in fresh condition. Comfort of passengers was secondary to care of livestock.
Stage Lines Appear
Primitive early stages were dubbed “hack wagons” or “mud wagons,” and a wagon is what they were--hard-riding, bone-jarring, metal-spring wagons with bench seats and a canvas top. When the Concord made its appearance, it was an instant sensation. It also brought a significant change in mail-carrying patterns.
For more than a century, post riders had carried letters in their saddlebags over the post roads of the colonies. In 1785, the government awarded the contract to carry the mails over the Boston Post Road to a stage line formed by Levi Pease and Reuben Sykes. Mail contracts required that passengers also be carried.
The first Concord reached California in 1850 via Cape Horn. With the opening of overland routes to the goldfields, demand grew. A single order in 1867 from Wells, Fargo & Company for 30 “elegant coaches” took a year to complete. The train that brought them to Omaha from New Hampshire consisted of 15 flatcars carrying the coaches and four boxcars with 60 sets of four-horse leather harnesses, plus spare parts.
Other coaches were shipped to Mexico, South America, South Africa and Australia, and earned praise for their sturdiness and dependability. Concord coaches also gained a reputation for being able to go anywhere. An eight-horse team once pulled a Concord to the top of the tallest peak in the Northeast, New Hampshire’s 6,288-foot-high Mt. Washington.
Lewis Downing’s business philosophy was to seek no more business than he could supervise himself. There was no “standard” Concord; all were individually built by hand to the customer’s specifications and marked with an identifying number.
A competitor of the Concord, the Troy coach, manufactured in Troy, N.Y., by coach makers Charles Veazie and Orsamus Eaton, never attained the popularity of the Concord. Its makers also built railroad passenger coaches.
The Stage Driver
On eastern roads, the usual crew of a stagecoach was one: the laconic, hard-drinking, tobacco-chewing driver, idol of all small boys. Holdups were unlikely, and no shotgun-toting guard was necessary. Unlike the West, where the cargo was often gold bullion and currency, Eastern banks and businesses used checks and bills of exchange of little value to a highwayman.
Dressed in his working outfit, with his wide-brimmed beaver hat, greatcoat and calfskin boots, the stage driver was an imposing sight. In winter, drivers favored coats of fur or buffalo hide and hand knit stockings imported from Canada. Like his flannel underwear, a driver’s stockings were always red, a color thought to be warmer than other colors. To complete his garb, the driver wrapped his waist with a tasseled silk sash, bright red and tied on the left. In winter, the sash was of knitted wool.
The badge of the stage driver’s calling was his whip. Measuring seventeen and a half feet from the end of the handle to the tip of the lash, a crack of this whip sounded like a pistol shot. Another piece of standard equipment carried by coaches was the long, tapered tin horn with which the driver announced his arrival at each settlement.
Much of what we know of the life of a stage driver comes to us from the writing of a remarkable woman, Anne Royall, the country’s first female reporter and editor. She spent much of her life crisscrossing the country in stagecoaches and writing about her experiences.
Stage drivers, lumberjacks, river boatmen and canal laborers were among the lustiest consumers of alcohol. The men engaged in these occupations were members of a new, mobile class without habitual conventions, roots or social ties. Despite its romantic allure, the life of a stage driver was hard, often boring. Much of his time was spent at a tavern waiting for sufficient passengers or cargo to make a trip. On the road he drove over deeply rutted tracks, soaked with rain and splattered by mud, or chilled by wind or snow.
Although he might live in a town, the stage driver worked under wretched conditions on the road, alone and remote from family and friends. His work was detached from much of society. Many of his passengers were rude and unreasonable types who cursed him for jostling them. Not surprisingly, drivers turned to alcohol, taking a drink whenever they stopped to water their horses at a tavern.
On one long trip, Anne Royall noted that only one driver had not publicly consumed alcohol on the road. “It was well the horses were sober,” she concluded. So prevalent was drinking at every stage stop, one foreign observer wrote in 1834, “The American stagecoach stops every five miles to water the horses and brandy the gentlemen.”
The End of the Concord
The spreading rail network restricted stagecoach travel and movement of the mails to remote areas. Fortunately for Abbot-Downing, hotels in cities and at summer resorts still found Concords ideal for transporting guests to and from train stations.
It was the automobile, first called a “horseless carriage,” that sealed the doom of horse-drawn vehicles. Even so, Abbot-Downing did not surrender without a fight. The company kept going with repair work and the manufacture of replacement parts. After 1915, it built motor truck bodies in a factory in Long Island City, N.Y. In 1928, a century after the first Concord was crafted, the firm was dissolved.
The Concord is gone from the scene now, but it should be remembered not as the dusty, dried-up antique of roadside tourist museums, or as the drab and worn replica in John Ford Westerns. A speeding Concord pulled by a team of eager, spirited horses in the hands of an expert driver was a thing of beauty, as exciting to any landlubber as a clipper ship under full sail was to a lover of the sea. There were no two ways about it: The Concord was indeed the queen of the road.
Labels: Concord Coach, History, Mail
Monday, September 26, 2011
Those Were the Days: A Salute to Hudson River Sloops
HISTORY
It has been said that any culture that fails to appreciate and understand its past cannot have much of a future. Westchester ’s forgotten history is a good example of this dictum. Although the Dutch occupied the Hudson Valley
Many nautical terms, for example, have come down to us from the Dutch. Captains of Dutch vessels were schippers--our word "skippers." The ships they sailed on the Hudson
Our word for the rail at the stern of a vessel--"taffrail"--is derived from tafereel, the Dutch word for the ornate carvings at the stern of 17th-century ships. Buoy, cruise, luff, marline, scow and yawl are other words with Dutch antecedents.
The Dutch also gave us a distinctive vessel--the Hudson River sloop--a single-masted fore-and-aft rigged, shallow-draft sailing ship with a low bowsprit and a single headsail set from the forestay. Eearly sloops had a square-rigged topsail, but a triangular sail that could be handled by fewer crew members later replaced this.Evolution of the Sloop
The first Dutch ships in New Netherland were ungainly keelboats with high sides. Drawing as much as twelve feet of water, they could also be used as ocean-going vessels. Faced with the capricious winds and powerful tides of the Hudson
The specialized Hudson River sloop that evolved was a shallow-draft, flat-bottomed, low-sided, wide boat carrying a large area of sail--a vessel that could navigate the river's unpredictable currents. In its heyday around 1830, the average sloop on the Hudson Hudson 's upper reaches below Albany
The Hudson Hudson
Sloops were built in virtually every Hudson River town and village. Among the vessels registered between 1789 and 1867, Nyack built 170, followed by Marlboro (in Ulster County ) with 112 and Albany Hudson Valley , Mount Pleasant Peekskill
A sloop generally carried a captain, pilot, three or four sailors, and a cabin boy or cook. Cargoes were varied. Produce of the land--flour, grain, hay, lumber, and furs--was brought downriver to the cities. Manufactured goods and imports went upriver--crockery, earthenware, cloth, hardware, oil, rum, salt, sugar, tobacco. Early sloops were called "merchant sloops," "freight sloops" or "market boats." Such vessels had no regular time of departure or fixed destination. They went when and where goods were available to be hauled.
At the peak of the sloop's popularity around 1830, a hundred could be seen on the Tappan Zee on a summer day. Every town and village along the Hudson
An innovation in design eventually enabled sloops to be made larger and increase their carrying capacity. This was the centerboard, a vertically sliding dropped keel that made the vessel much easier to handle. Arthur H. Clark, author of a 1904 history of yachting, attributes the invention of the pivoted centerboard to a British naval officer, Molyneux Shuldham, who built a model of one in 1809 while a prisoner of war in France
A U.S. patent for a centerboard was granted on April 10, 1811, to three brothers from Cape May , N.J. Hudson River boat builders added centerboards to sloops five years later. A centerboard made it possible for a large and heavily laden vessel to have a draft of only six feet, and clear the Hudson
Steamboat operators published timetables showing arrival and departure times at the ports they served. This led to the introduction of competing "packet sloop" service. First to do this was Capt. Elihu S. Bunker of Hudson , N.Y.
John Lambert, an obscure young Englishman, has left us a word picture of travel on a large packet sloop. He had been sent to Canada England New York
Lambert traveled by coach to the town of Hudson, where he booked passage on Captain Bunker's brand new sloop Experiment, paying five dollars, for which passengers also received three meals a day, "including spirits." Built at Marlboro, at 130 tons it was "the largest and best" sloop specifically designed for the Hudson River passenger trade.
Two private cabins toward the stern contained several berths for women. Amidships was a large general room upwards of 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. On each side was a double tier of berths with printed cotton curtains for men. At the front of this cabin was a bar "like that of a coffee-house," where the passengers could buy "wine, bottled porter, ale, segars, and such articles as were not included in the passage-money." Between the bar and the crew's quarters in the forecastle was "a very complete kitchen fitted up with a good fire-place, copper boilers and every convenience for cooking."Decline and Fall
Steamboats offered growing competition, but sloops remained an important means of transport. At first, steam vessels were not ready to capture the bulk of the lucrative passenger business from sloops. Robert Fulton's monopoly on steam navigation limited the number of steam vessels in service before 1825. Moreover, his company had to overcome the misgivings of travelers that steamboats were dangerous. Several well-publicized incidents of mechanical breakdown of steam vessels led some to believe that steamboats were an unreliable or even a dangerous mode of travel. Sloops were also popular because they offered service to and from the smaller towns at which the steamers did not stop.
Competition from the Hudson River Railroad in 1851, however, sealed the sloop's doom. The first train had sped from New York City to Greenbush, opposite Albany
By 1860, few sloops were being built. One of the last of these was the Stephen Underhill Staten Island by the devastating hurricane of 1938.
Labels: History, Hudson River Sloops
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
State Prison or State Park? Preserving the Hudson's Far Shore
HISTORY
"Construct a new prison at Bear Mountain and abandon Sing Sing prison at Ossining." Unthinkable as this recommendation sounds today, it almost became a reality one hundred years ago. Before the move was halted, Sing Sing Prison actually transferred prisoners upriver from Ossining to begin construction on a new prison.
The wheels of change had been set in motion in 1906 when New York Governor Frank W. Higgins appointed a commission to create new prisons. Two years later, the commission announced plans to build a penitentiary at Bear Mountain to replace Sing Sing. Only seven years before, the village of Sing Sing--unhappy with its close association with the prison of that name—had changed its name to Ossining.
For the new prison, the state bought a 740-acre tract of privately owned land at Bear Mountain. Inmates were transported upriver from Sing Sing and housed in barracks within a tall stockade with guard towers at the corners. Convicts began clearing trees and brush from the site near Highland Lake (today's Hessian Lake).
The prospect of a prison at Bear Mountain alarmed and infuriated all who loved the Hudson Highlands. Not only did the area have scenic and recreational values, but it had hallowed historical associations as well. On the site were the ruins of Forts Clinton and Montgomery, where militiamen of Orange and Putnam Counties had fallen before a surprise British attack in 1777.
Earlier Victories
This prison proposal was not the first assault on the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley. Only a few years before, conservationists had succeeded in stopping the blatant destruction of the unique Palisades. Originally, the rock debris at the base of the cliff had been used merely as a source of ballast for ships. Serious threats to the Palisades began with urban development and the growing demand for road building material. Between Weehawken and Hook Mountain, dozens of quarries furiously blasted huge chunks out of the cliff face. Prominent landmarks were reduced to rubble.
A prime mover in the fight to halt this destruction was the New Jersey Federation of Women's Clubs. In 1897, the Federation sent a delegation to Governor Foster M. Voorhees in Trenton and proposed a commission to study ways of saving the Palisades. At about the same time, former New York City Comptroller Andrew H. Green approached Governor Theodore Roosevelt in Albany. Green had conceived the consolidation of New York City and Brooklyn into “Greater New York.” He was also a founder of an organization with an unwieldy name: Trustees of Scenic and Historic Places and Objects in the State of New York. In 1901 it would shorten its name to the more descriptive American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society.
Bills were introduced in 1900 in both state legislatures to form a Palisades Interstate Park Commission consisting of ten members, with five members appointed by the governor of each state. Its purpose would be to acquire land and preserve the Palisades for recreational purposes. In Albany, the legislation passed easily. In Trenton, lobbyists for the trap rock quarries worked to defeat the bill. The New Jersey Federation of Women's Clubs mounted a vigorous campaign, however, and the legislation was passed.
George W. Perkins, first vice-president of the New York Life Insurance Company, was named president of the Commission. He discovered that the two states had only provided only $10,000 to stop the quarrying. Perkins had a reputation for being able to elicit money from other persons of wealth. He proved this by securing large contributions to buy up land. J.P. Morgan gave $122,500--and invited Perkins to join the Morgan bank. He accepted. The Commission purchased the Carpenter Brothers quarry for $132,500, thus stopping the blasting.
Without the creation of Palisades Interstate Park, this inspiring natural feature would have been so extensively quarried that little would be left today. A contemporary writer summed up the victory: "The events from the advent of man to the assault on the Palisades may be covered in a few words: Adam discovered the earth. Columbus discovered America. John McAdam, a descendant of the old Adam, discovered how to construct roads with crushed stone. Carpenter Brothers, quarrymen, discovered the Palisades. And the people of New York and New Jersey discovered that one of the most beautiful features of the Hudson scenery was being ruined to supply road material."
During the Commission's first ten years of operation, some thirteen miles of the Palisades were saved at a cost of only $450,000. In 1906, the jurisdiction of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission was extended to include Hook Mountain and Stony Point. The immediate reaction of the quarry operators was to move farther north into the Hudson Highlands.
The Battle for the Highlands
Another outspoken supporter of protection of the Highlands was a New York City obstetrician, Dr. Edward L. Partridge, who had a summer home on Storm King Mountain. He enlisted wealthy friends to form the Association for the Protection of the Highlands of the Hudson in 1907.
New York State was planning a celebration in the autumn of 1909 to commemorate Henry Hudson's 1609 exploration of the river and Robert Fulton's 1807 operation of a successful steam vessel. The upcoming festivities helped to spur public interest in the preservation of the natural beauty of the Hudson Highlands.
Again, the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society spearheaded the effort. They had argued for Federal protection of 65 square miles on the east side of the Hudson and 57 square miles on the west side. Authorities in Washington turned them down. The New York legislature eventually passed a bill that set aside 75 square miles on the west side of the Hudson as the Highlands of the Hudson Forest Reserve, with Dr. Partridge as the secretary of a commission to administer it. It was a toothless tiger.
Preparations for the construction of a prison at Bear Mountain continued relentlessly. Architects were invited to submit plans for a walled enclosure and eighteen buildings, the whole not to cost more than $2 million. Specified were an administration building, a cellblock with a capacity of 1,400 inmates, a mess hall and a chapel. Cells were to measure six by ten feet, with a toilet, washbowl and bunk. Auxiliary buildings included a prison hospital to care for 75 patients and a building with 30 cells to isolate prisoners who were troublemakers.
Enter the Harrimans
Edward H. Harriman, the railroad magnate, was an influential force to be reckoned with. He had money and wealthy friends in seats of power, and he would not hesitate to use both. The sprawling Harriman properties--more than 30,000 acres west of the Hudson--had been bought over the years and kept in an undeveloped state. He did not want a prison at his doorstep.
Working with insurance executive George W. Perkins, Harriman conceived a plan that would create a giant park between the Ramapo and the Hudson rivers. In a June 1909 letter to New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes, he proposed the gift of 19 square miles of the properties he had assembled, and $1 million to acquire other lands between his lands and the Hudson. He added a suggestion that the prison be moved to the other side of the river, "so as not to destroy the natural beauty which can never again be replaced." Governor Hughes responded favorably.
Unfortunately, Harriman died of stomach cancer on September 9, 1909, leaving his entire estate of $70 million to his wife, Mary Averell Harriman. Three months after the death of her husband, Mrs. Harriman wrote to Governor Hughes. Her letter offered a gift of land to New York for a state park, and $1 million to administer it. She also promised to raise an additional $1.5 million by popular subscription in sixteen days.
For its part, the State would appropriate $2.5 million to buy additional land and build roads. As a condition, the State had to agree to abandon construction of the prison at Bear Mountain. In two weeks, thanks to the persuasive efforts of George W. Perkins, $1,625,000 was raised from wealthy philanthropists. J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller each gave $500,000. Eleven other wealthy contributors gave $50,000 each.
New York and New Jersey passed the necessary enabling legislation. Because the new park would become part of the Palisades Interstate Park system, the Hudson River Forest Reserve was abolished after an existence of little more than a year. New Jersey also appropriated $500,000 to build the Henry Hudson Drive along the base of the Palisades.
On October 29, 1910, 18-year-old Yale student W. Averell Harriman, fifth of six Harriman children and later governor of New York, presented to the Palisades Interstate Park Commission the deed to 10,000 acres of land and a check for $1 million.
A Park Is Born
Development began almost immediately. The prison stockade and barracks were demolished. A dock was built on the Hudson for visitors who arrived by steamboat. Bear Mountain State Park opened officially for public use on July 5, 1913, and the first camps were occupied. In 1915, the rustic Bear Mountain Inn was built of huge chestnut logs. By 1919, two steamboats were bought. Fares for round trips from New York on weekends were 85 cents for adults and 45 cents for children.
In 1922, Benton Mackaye, a U.S. Labor Department employee and regional planner, proposed the construction of a 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail. It would wind through fourteen states, from Maine's Mount Katahdin to Georgia's Springer Mountain. Its first section--a 16-mile segment--was laid out in the park in 1923. That same year, a large area was carved from Bear Mountain State Park and named Harriman State Park. Today, it contains 46,647 acres and is the second largest in New York's state park system. Bear Mountain State Park contains 5,067 acres.
Completed in 1924, the Bear Mountain Bridge, built by a privately owned company, the dramatically situated bridge and its scenic highway from the Annsville traffic circle gave easy access the park to residents on the east side of the Hudson. Until 1931, it was the only motor vehicle and pedestrian bridge across the Hudson south of Albany. The president of the bridge company was E. Roland Harriman, youngest son of Mary A. Harriman. Although the Bridge had cost about $5,000,000 to construct, New York State purchased it for a bargain price of $2,300,000 in 1940.
By 1927, seven other park trails were completed. Swampy areas were dammed to create pristine lakes of surprising beauty. These were given Indian names. In summer, young campers occupied cabins along the shores of these lakes and were introduced to the wonders of nature. Over the years, walkers and hikers have explored the old mine roads, military trails and Indian paths that crisscross the parks. Surveyed and maintained by dedicated volunteers from metropolitan walking clubs, newer trails lead to the crests of peaks and often reveal unparalleled views.
George W. Perkins, who had died in 1920, was memorialized in 1934 with the construction of Perkins Memorial Drive, a motor road to Bear Mountain's summit. Thanks to careful preservation and enlightened development by visionaries like Perkins, unspoiled tracts of exceptional charm and historical interest remain close to the metropolitan area. Yet in a wilderness so near to population centers, it is still possible for a tyro hiker to become lost within sight of the Empire State Building.
Fire and Ice
Today, the parks are a veritable living museum of the early history of technology. Hikers frequently encounter the pits and shafts of old mines dug to exploit the region’s magnetite iron ore between 1746 and 1880. Fewer--but nonetheless interesting--are the ruins of furnaces in which the ore was reduced to pig iron. Iron from these mines and furnaces formed the massive chain that denied British naval vessels access to the upper Hudson came from here. A few links of this chain are on view at West Point.
Among British policies contributing to the American Revolution was the shortsighted mercantilism that viewed colonies as existing only for the enrichment of the mother country. Historians have placed emphasis on the Tea Act and stamp taxes, but another reason for Colonial dissatisfaction was the so-called Acts of Trade, which governed various manufactured products.
Particularly onerous among these were the Iron Acts, which allowed the colonists to mine iron ore but denied them the right to manufacture iron products from it. The law decreed that the iron had to be smelted and shipped to England without duty in blocks called "pigs." Articles of iron were illegally manufactured in Colonial America in so-called "slitting mills." This practice became a source of graft for Colonial administrators bribed to conceal the existence of such mills.
In the mid-19th century, the Knickerbocker Ice Company owned the proposed prison site. In winter, ice was cut on Highland Lake and sold in New York City. Blocks of ice were slid down long chutes for storage in large sheds on the Hudson shore near Iona Island. Knickerbocker also cut ice on the east side of the river at Lake Meahagh (then known as Knickerbocker Pond) bordered by Buchanan, Verplanck and Montrose.
Hikers on Dunderberg Mountain are sometimes surprised to come upon evidences of sections of a railroad roadbed and tunnels. This is all that remains of the Dunderberg Spiral Railway. A cable incline was to have taken passengers to the summit of the mountain at 920 feet, where a hotel and summer colony were planned. The return trip was to be by gravity over a series of gentle grades winding down the face of the mountain for nine miles. It was the 1890 brainchild of Henry J. Mumford, who hoped to duplicate his previous successful operation of a gravity railway in Pennsylvania. After spending $1 million, he ran out of money. The depression of 1893 sealed the fate of this broken dream.
Telltale Lilacs
From the beginning, it was the Commission's policy to encourage removal of persons living within park boundaries. Houses were purchased from heirs when owners died, and money was offered to current owners to vacate homes. Hikers frequently come upon old foundations and cellar holes--sites of former dwellings and outbuildings. Lilac bushes or vestigial gardens are often the only clues to former human presence.
Hamlets that existed in the past and are no more include Baileytown, Bulsontown, Johnsontown and Woodtown. The largest of such now-abandoned hamlets is Doodletown, located in the valley between Dunderberg and Bear Mountain. Folklore has it that the town got its name after British troops passed through on the way to attack the American forts on Popolopen Creek and played the song "Yankee Doodle" to deceive the inhabitants about their identity. Like many folk tales, it has no basis in reality and already had that name. In his report on the battle, the American commander, future Governor George Clinton, noted that he had sent a half company of troops to "the place called Doodletown" to scout the British advance.
The name "Doodletown" is believed to come from two Dutch words, "dood," meaning dead, and "del," dale or valley. Dutch skippers often put into the mouth of Doodletown Brook for water and wood. Something about the place perhaps led them to call it "Dead Valley." "Town" was added after a community had sprung up there. The U.S. government bought Iona Island in 1899 for use as a naval ammunition depot, and many residents of the little hamlet found employment there. By 1945, the population of Doodletown was about 300 persons.
After the Second World War, the Navy abandoned Iona Island. The Park bought it for $265,000 in 1965, the same year that the last of the houses in Doodletown was vacated and demolished. The site of Doodletown, with its two lonesome cemeteries, can be reached from Route 9W and several trails.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to those early conservationists who had the foresight to preserve this parkland for us. Each year these parks receive eight million visitors--more than the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or Yellowstone. No matter whether you stroll, walk, roam, saunter, climb, hike, backpack or camp, go and explore them. [Guidebooks and maps are for sale at the Bear Mountain Visitor Center near the Anthony Wayne Recreation Area, Exit 17 on the Palisades Interstate Parkway.]
A Personal Postscript
Over the years, campers, walkers and hikers have explored the wood roads and trails that crisscross the park. Surveyed and maintained by dedicated volunteers from metropolitan walking clubs, easily followed trails lead to the crests of peaks and often reveal unparalleled views.
I have long had a fondness for this fascinating area. In the depths of the Depression I spent three summers at an unusual summer camp in Harriman State Park. Called Camp Freedom, it was located on the western shore of Lake Sebago. Operated by an organization with a name straight out of Charles Dickens--The Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor--Camp Freedom was a "leadership camp" to develop counselors for the Association's other camps. My brother, eight years older than me had also been a camper at Camp Freedom. I would later discover his name inscribed in charcoal on the underside of the open-fronted Adirondack style shelter atop Tom Jones Mountain. Park records are scarce, but one document reveals that in return for construction of the camp, the Association enjoyed rent-free occupancy for eight and a half years. The nominal annual rental in the first years was $745.
Camping season at Camp Freedom lasted from the beginning of July and to the end of August. At the Association's massive camps centered on Lake Kanawauke, hordes of underprivileged children were brought up from the city for two-week periods.
The journey to and from Camp Freedom and other camps in the parks was by Hudson River steamboat. Campers assembled at the pier at West 40th Street and the Hudson River. Stops were made at 130th Street, Yonkers, Indian Point and Bear Mountain. Here buses met the campers and transported them to the camps.
Camp Freedom's roster was thirty boys, three counselors--all recent graduates from Ivy League schools--and a cook remembered for his fondness for baked beans. Seven small screened cabins stretched across the hillside, six with five campers each and one for counselors. Nearby was a large building, also screened, with a mess hall and kitchen on one side, and a recreation area on the other. A rough outdoor latrine, dubbed the "La-La," was a short distance away. It would be taboo today, but the thirty boys were divided into three “tribes” with Indian names: Iroquois, Ute and Seneca, This division provided three teams for baseball, flag football and other sports,
Freedom here was more than a word, and the concept of "freedom" was carried to an unusual extreme. On Wednesdays, each camper had to leave the camp under his own power right after breakfast. A basic lunch was provided. Travel could be by canoe or afoot on the trails that laced the hills and valleys. Sunday was another free day. More traditionally oriented campers would hitchhike to such centers of civilization as Southfields, Tuxedo, Sloatsburg or Suffern for church or treats like sodas and sundaes. For my part, I decided to explore the vastness of the park, and course its trails. I learned to orient myself anywhere.
A well-stocked library contained reference books on reptiles, mammals, trees, shrubs, flowers, and rocks and minerals. Other than the twice-a-day swim periods and afternoon sports, campers were encouraged to pursue their own interests and intellectual pursuits under the tutelage of a counselor whether it was woodcarving, natural history or camping skills. I chose mineral collecting. This unusual camping experience whetted my interest in geology and natural history, and led to a decision to study geology. The rich past of the area also left me with an abiding curiosity about local history that endures to this day. And, in coursing the trails, I learned woodcraft skills that only a few years later would help me to stay alive during World War Two.
In 1939, the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor became the Community Service Society, which still serves the poor of New York City. Hudson River steamboats are only a memory. After the war, I resumed my interest in hiking. To reach the park on weekends, I used the Chambers Street Ferry and the Erie Railroad. Later I introduced my two sons to the wonders of the woods on park trails. With the creation of a large public bathing beach at the north end of Lake Sebago, the buildings of Camp Freedom were demolished in 1952, and no vestiges remain.
I was last a Camp Freedom camper 75 long years ago. Nevertheless, I should like to stand once again on the porch of that modest cabin under Parker Cabin Mountain and gaze across Sebago's waters upon the verdant slopes of Brundige Mountain beyond. Yet the hills could hardly be so lush with mountain laurel and wild azalea, the meadow flowers so soft and lovely, as they are in the eyes of memory.
"Construct a new prison at Bear Mountain and abandon Sing Sing prison at Ossining." Unthinkable as this recommendation sounds today, it almost became a reality one hundred years ago. Before the move was halted, Sing Sing Prison actually transferred prisoners upriver from Ossining to begin construction on a new prison.
The wheels of change had been set in motion in 1906 when New York Governor Frank W. Higgins appointed a commission to create new prisons. Two years later, the commission announced plans to build a penitentiary at Bear Mountain to replace Sing Sing. Only seven years before, the village of Sing Sing--unhappy with its close association with the prison of that name—had changed its name to Ossining.
For the new prison, the state bought a 740-acre tract of privately owned land at Bear Mountain. Inmates were transported upriver from Sing Sing and housed in barracks within a tall stockade with guard towers at the corners. Convicts began clearing trees and brush from the site near Highland Lake (today's Hessian Lake).
The prospect of a prison at Bear Mountain alarmed and infuriated all who loved the Hudson Highlands. Not only did the area have scenic and recreational values, but it had hallowed historical associations as well. On the site were the ruins of Forts Clinton and Montgomery, where militiamen of Orange and Putnam Counties had fallen before a surprise British attack in 1777.
Earlier Victories
This prison proposal was not the first assault on the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley. Only a few years before, conservationists had succeeded in stopping the blatant destruction of the unique Palisades. Originally, the rock debris at the base of the cliff had been used merely as a source of ballast for ships. Serious threats to the Palisades began with urban development and the growing demand for road building material. Between Weehawken and Hook Mountain, dozens of quarries furiously blasted huge chunks out of the cliff face. Prominent landmarks were reduced to rubble.
A prime mover in the fight to halt this destruction was the New Jersey Federation of Women's Clubs. In 1897, the Federation sent a delegation to Governor Foster M. Voorhees in Trenton and proposed a commission to study ways of saving the Palisades. At about the same time, former New York City Comptroller Andrew H. Green approached Governor Theodore Roosevelt in Albany. Green had conceived the consolidation of New York City and Brooklyn into “Greater New York.” He was also a founder of an organization with an unwieldy name: Trustees of Scenic and Historic Places and Objects in the State of New York. In 1901 it would shorten its name to the more descriptive American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society.
Bills were introduced in 1900 in both state legislatures to form a Palisades Interstate Park Commission consisting of ten members, with five members appointed by the governor of each state. Its purpose would be to acquire land and preserve the Palisades for recreational purposes. In Albany, the legislation passed easily. In Trenton, lobbyists for the trap rock quarries worked to defeat the bill. The New Jersey Federation of Women's Clubs mounted a vigorous campaign, however, and the legislation was passed.
George W. Perkins, first vice-president of the New York Life Insurance Company, was named president of the Commission. He discovered that the two states had only provided only $10,000 to stop the quarrying. Perkins had a reputation for being able to elicit money from other persons of wealth. He proved this by securing large contributions to buy up land. J.P. Morgan gave $122,500--and invited Perkins to join the Morgan bank. He accepted. The Commission purchased the Carpenter Brothers quarry for $132,500, thus stopping the blasting.
Without the creation of Palisades Interstate Park, this inspiring natural feature would have been so extensively quarried that little would be left today. A contemporary writer summed up the victory: "The events from the advent of man to the assault on the Palisades may be covered in a few words: Adam discovered the earth. Columbus discovered America. John McAdam, a descendant of the old Adam, discovered how to construct roads with crushed stone. Carpenter Brothers, quarrymen, discovered the Palisades. And the people of New York and New Jersey discovered that one of the most beautiful features of the Hudson scenery was being ruined to supply road material."
During the Commission's first ten years of operation, some thirteen miles of the Palisades were saved at a cost of only $450,000. In 1906, the jurisdiction of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission was extended to include Hook Mountain and Stony Point. The immediate reaction of the quarry operators was to move farther north into the Hudson Highlands.
The Battle for the Highlands
Another outspoken supporter of protection of the Highlands was a New York City obstetrician, Dr. Edward L. Partridge, who had a summer home on Storm King Mountain. He enlisted wealthy friends to form the Association for the Protection of the Highlands of the Hudson in 1907.
New York State was planning a celebration in the autumn of 1909 to commemorate Henry Hudson's 1609 exploration of the river and Robert Fulton's 1807 operation of a successful steam vessel. The upcoming festivities helped to spur public interest in the preservation of the natural beauty of the Hudson Highlands.
Again, the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society spearheaded the effort. They had argued for Federal protection of 65 square miles on the east side of the Hudson and 57 square miles on the west side. Authorities in Washington turned them down. The New York legislature eventually passed a bill that set aside 75 square miles on the west side of the Hudson as the Highlands of the Hudson Forest Reserve, with Dr. Partridge as the secretary of a commission to administer it. It was a toothless tiger.
Preparations for the construction of a prison at Bear Mountain continued relentlessly. Architects were invited to submit plans for a walled enclosure and eighteen buildings, the whole not to cost more than $2 million. Specified were an administration building, a cellblock with a capacity of 1,400 inmates, a mess hall and a chapel. Cells were to measure six by ten feet, with a toilet, washbowl and bunk. Auxiliary buildings included a prison hospital to care for 75 patients and a building with 30 cells to isolate prisoners who were troublemakers.
Enter the Harrimans
Edward H. Harriman, the railroad magnate, was an influential force to be reckoned with. He had money and wealthy friends in seats of power, and he would not hesitate to use both. The sprawling Harriman properties--more than 30,000 acres west of the Hudson--had been bought over the years and kept in an undeveloped state. He did not want a prison at his doorstep.
Working with insurance executive George W. Perkins, Harriman conceived a plan that would create a giant park between the Ramapo and the Hudson rivers. In a June 1909 letter to New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes, he proposed the gift of 19 square miles of the properties he had assembled, and $1 million to acquire other lands between his lands and the Hudson. He added a suggestion that the prison be moved to the other side of the river, "so as not to destroy the natural beauty which can never again be replaced." Governor Hughes responded favorably.
Unfortunately, Harriman died of stomach cancer on September 9, 1909, leaving his entire estate of $70 million to his wife, Mary Averell Harriman. Three months after the death of her husband, Mrs. Harriman wrote to Governor Hughes. Her letter offered a gift of land to New York for a state park, and $1 million to administer it. She also promised to raise an additional $1.5 million by popular subscription in sixteen days.
For its part, the State would appropriate $2.5 million to buy additional land and build roads. As a condition, the State had to agree to abandon construction of the prison at Bear Mountain. In two weeks, thanks to the persuasive efforts of George W. Perkins, $1,625,000 was raised from wealthy philanthropists. J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller each gave $500,000. Eleven other wealthy contributors gave $50,000 each.
New York and New Jersey passed the necessary enabling legislation. Because the new park would become part of the Palisades Interstate Park system, the Hudson River Forest Reserve was abolished after an existence of little more than a year. New Jersey also appropriated $500,000 to build the Henry Hudson Drive along the base of the Palisades.
On October 29, 1910, 18-year-old Yale student W. Averell Harriman, fifth of six Harriman children and later governor of New York, presented to the Palisades Interstate Park Commission the deed to 10,000 acres of land and a check for $1 million.
A Park Is Born
Development began almost immediately. The prison stockade and barracks were demolished. A dock was built on the Hudson for visitors who arrived by steamboat. Bear Mountain State Park opened officially for public use on July 5, 1913, and the first camps were occupied. In 1915, the rustic Bear Mountain Inn was built of huge chestnut logs. By 1919, two steamboats were bought. Fares for round trips from New York on weekends were 85 cents for adults and 45 cents for children.
In 1922, Benton Mackaye, a U.S. Labor Department employee and regional planner, proposed the construction of a 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail. It would wind through fourteen states, from Maine's Mount Katahdin to Georgia's Springer Mountain. Its first section--a 16-mile segment--was laid out in the park in 1923. That same year, a large area was carved from Bear Mountain State Park and named Harriman State Park. Today, it contains 46,647 acres and is the second largest in New York's state park system. Bear Mountain State Park contains 5,067 acres.
Completed in 1924, the Bear Mountain Bridge, built by a privately owned company, the dramatically situated bridge and its scenic highway from the Annsville traffic circle gave easy access the park to residents on the east side of the Hudson. Until 1931, it was the only motor vehicle and pedestrian bridge across the Hudson south of Albany. The president of the bridge company was E. Roland Harriman, youngest son of Mary A. Harriman. Although the Bridge had cost about $5,000,000 to construct, New York State purchased it for a bargain price of $2,300,000 in 1940.
By 1927, seven other park trails were completed. Swampy areas were dammed to create pristine lakes of surprising beauty. These were given Indian names. In summer, young campers occupied cabins along the shores of these lakes and were introduced to the wonders of nature. Over the years, walkers and hikers have explored the old mine roads, military trails and Indian paths that crisscross the parks. Surveyed and maintained by dedicated volunteers from metropolitan walking clubs, newer trails lead to the crests of peaks and often reveal unparalleled views.
George W. Perkins, who had died in 1920, was memorialized in 1934 with the construction of Perkins Memorial Drive, a motor road to Bear Mountain's summit. Thanks to careful preservation and enlightened development by visionaries like Perkins, unspoiled tracts of exceptional charm and historical interest remain close to the metropolitan area. Yet in a wilderness so near to population centers, it is still possible for a tyro hiker to become lost within sight of the Empire State Building.
Fire and Ice
Today, the parks are a veritable living museum of the early history of technology. Hikers frequently encounter the pits and shafts of old mines dug to exploit the region’s magnetite iron ore between 1746 and 1880. Fewer--but nonetheless interesting--are the ruins of furnaces in which the ore was reduced to pig iron. Iron from these mines and furnaces formed the massive chain that denied British naval vessels access to the upper Hudson came from here. A few links of this chain are on view at West Point.
Among British policies contributing to the American Revolution was the shortsighted mercantilism that viewed colonies as existing only for the enrichment of the mother country. Historians have placed emphasis on the Tea Act and stamp taxes, but another reason for Colonial dissatisfaction was the so-called Acts of Trade, which governed various manufactured products.
Particularly onerous among these were the Iron Acts, which allowed the colonists to mine iron ore but denied them the right to manufacture iron products from it. The law decreed that the iron had to be smelted and shipped to England without duty in blocks called "pigs." Articles of iron were illegally manufactured in Colonial America in so-called "slitting mills." This practice became a source of graft for Colonial administrators bribed to conceal the existence of such mills.
In the mid-19th century, the Knickerbocker Ice Company owned the proposed prison site. In winter, ice was cut on Highland Lake and sold in New York City. Blocks of ice were slid down long chutes for storage in large sheds on the Hudson shore near Iona Island. Knickerbocker also cut ice on the east side of the river at Lake Meahagh (then known as Knickerbocker Pond) bordered by Buchanan, Verplanck and Montrose.
Hikers on Dunderberg Mountain are sometimes surprised to come upon evidences of sections of a railroad roadbed and tunnels. This is all that remains of the Dunderberg Spiral Railway. A cable incline was to have taken passengers to the summit of the mountain at 920 feet, where a hotel and summer colony were planned. The return trip was to be by gravity over a series of gentle grades winding down the face of the mountain for nine miles. It was the 1890 brainchild of Henry J. Mumford, who hoped to duplicate his previous successful operation of a gravity railway in Pennsylvania. After spending $1 million, he ran out of money. The depression of 1893 sealed the fate of this broken dream.
Telltale Lilacs
From the beginning, it was the Commission's policy to encourage removal of persons living within park boundaries. Houses were purchased from heirs when owners died, and money was offered to current owners to vacate homes. Hikers frequently come upon old foundations and cellar holes--sites of former dwellings and outbuildings. Lilac bushes or vestigial gardens are often the only clues to former human presence.
Hamlets that existed in the past and are no more include Baileytown, Bulsontown, Johnsontown and Woodtown. The largest of such now-abandoned hamlets is Doodletown, located in the valley between Dunderberg and Bear Mountain. Folklore has it that the town got its name after British troops passed through on the way to attack the American forts on Popolopen Creek and played the song "Yankee Doodle" to deceive the inhabitants about their identity. Like many folk tales, it has no basis in reality and already had that name. In his report on the battle, the American commander, future Governor George Clinton, noted that he had sent a half company of troops to "the place called Doodletown" to scout the British advance.
The name "Doodletown" is believed to come from two Dutch words, "dood," meaning dead, and "del," dale or valley. Dutch skippers often put into the mouth of Doodletown Brook for water and wood. Something about the place perhaps led them to call it "Dead Valley." "Town" was added after a community had sprung up there. The U.S. government bought Iona Island in 1899 for use as a naval ammunition depot, and many residents of the little hamlet found employment there. By 1945, the population of Doodletown was about 300 persons.
After the Second World War, the Navy abandoned Iona Island. The Park bought it for $265,000 in 1965, the same year that the last of the houses in Doodletown was vacated and demolished. The site of Doodletown, with its two lonesome cemeteries, can be reached from Route 9W and several trails.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to those early conservationists who had the foresight to preserve this parkland for us. Each year these parks receive eight million visitors--more than the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or Yellowstone. No matter whether you stroll, walk, roam, saunter, climb, hike, backpack or camp, go and explore them. [Guidebooks and maps are for sale at the Bear Mountain Visitor Center near the Anthony Wayne Recreation Area, Exit 17 on the Palisades Interstate Parkway.]
A Personal Postscript
Over the years, campers, walkers and hikers have explored the wood roads and trails that crisscross the park. Surveyed and maintained by dedicated volunteers from metropolitan walking clubs, easily followed trails lead to the crests of peaks and often reveal unparalleled views.
I have long had a fondness for this fascinating area. In the depths of the Depression I spent three summers at an unusual summer camp in Harriman State Park. Called Camp Freedom, it was located on the western shore of Lake Sebago. Operated by an organization with a name straight out of Charles Dickens--The Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor--Camp Freedom was a "leadership camp" to develop counselors for the Association's other camps. My brother, eight years older than me had also been a camper at Camp Freedom. I would later discover his name inscribed in charcoal on the underside of the open-fronted Adirondack style shelter atop Tom Jones Mountain. Park records are scarce, but one document reveals that in return for construction of the camp, the Association enjoyed rent-free occupancy for eight and a half years. The nominal annual rental in the first years was $745.
Camping season at Camp Freedom lasted from the beginning of July and to the end of August. At the Association's massive camps centered on Lake Kanawauke, hordes of underprivileged children were brought up from the city for two-week periods.
The journey to and from Camp Freedom and other camps in the parks was by Hudson River steamboat. Campers assembled at the pier at West 40th Street and the Hudson River. Stops were made at 130th Street, Yonkers, Indian Point and Bear Mountain. Here buses met the campers and transported them to the camps.
Camp Freedom's roster was thirty boys, three counselors--all recent graduates from Ivy League schools--and a cook remembered for his fondness for baked beans. Seven small screened cabins stretched across the hillside, six with five campers each and one for counselors. Nearby was a large building, also screened, with a mess hall and kitchen on one side, and a recreation area on the other. A rough outdoor latrine, dubbed the "La-La," was a short distance away. It would be taboo today, but the thirty boys were divided into three “tribes” with Indian names: Iroquois, Ute and Seneca, This division provided three teams for baseball, flag football and other sports,
Freedom here was more than a word, and the concept of "freedom" was carried to an unusual extreme. On Wednesdays, each camper had to leave the camp under his own power right after breakfast. A basic lunch was provided. Travel could be by canoe or afoot on the trails that laced the hills and valleys. Sunday was another free day. More traditionally oriented campers would hitchhike to such centers of civilization as Southfields, Tuxedo, Sloatsburg or Suffern for church or treats like sodas and sundaes. For my part, I decided to explore the vastness of the park, and course its trails. I learned to orient myself anywhere.
A well-stocked library contained reference books on reptiles, mammals, trees, shrubs, flowers, and rocks and minerals. Other than the twice-a-day swim periods and afternoon sports, campers were encouraged to pursue their own interests and intellectual pursuits under the tutelage of a counselor whether it was woodcarving, natural history or camping skills. I chose mineral collecting. This unusual camping experience whetted my interest in geology and natural history, and led to a decision to study geology. The rich past of the area also left me with an abiding curiosity about local history that endures to this day. And, in coursing the trails, I learned woodcraft skills that only a few years later would help me to stay alive during World War Two.
In 1939, the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor became the Community Service Society, which still serves the poor of New York City. Hudson River steamboats are only a memory. After the war, I resumed my interest in hiking. To reach the park on weekends, I used the Chambers Street Ferry and the Erie Railroad. Later I introduced my two sons to the wonders of the woods on park trails. With the creation of a large public bathing beach at the north end of Lake Sebago, the buildings of Camp Freedom were demolished in 1952, and no vestiges remain.
I was last a Camp Freedom camper 75 long years ago. Nevertheless, I should like to stand once again on the porch of that modest cabin under Parker Cabin Mountain and gaze across Sebago's waters upon the verdant slopes of Brundige Mountain beyond. Yet the hills could hardly be so lush with mountain laurel and wild azalea, the meadow flowers so soft and lovely, as they are in the eyes of memory.
Labels: Bear Mountain, Camp Freedom, Doodletown, History, Sing Sing Prison, The Palisdades
Thursday, November 05, 2009
The First Unknown Soldier: Symbol of Another Great Generation
HISTORY
This year the holiday known as Veterans Day, formerly called Armistice Day, will be observed on Wednesday, November 11, 2009. Although the date is widely observed, many are unfamiliar with its origins. It commemorates the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front on November 11, 1918. Marking the end of World War One, the armistice between the Allies and Germany was signed in a railway car at Rethondes, France, and took effect at the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month."
Declared a national holiday in many allied nations to remember those members of the armed forces who were killed during war, an exception is Italy, where the end of the war is commemorated on November 4 as the Armistice of Villa Giusti. After World War Two, the name of the holiday was changed to Veterans Day in the United States and to Remembrance Day in countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Armistice Day (Jour de l'Armistice) remains an official holiday in France. It is also an official holiday in Belgium, where it is also known as the Day of Peace. In many parts of the world people observe a two-minute moment of silence at 11:00 a.m. as a sign of respect for the approximately 20 milliom who died in the war.
Prologue
Praise has been heaped deservedly on the generation of Americans that endured the trials and hardships of the Second World War. To single it out and call it "The Greatest Generation," however, does a disservice to other great generations and their sacrifices. The contributions of this newest "greatest generation," of which this writer is a member, have been closely examined in countless books and articles. But we should not overlook how much was sacrificed when an earlier "great generation" fought and died in the blood bath of the First World War. The account that follows is a tribute to the now-dwindling great generation I was brought up to honor and to remember.
The American Expeditionary Force that sailed for Europe and a war to end all war suffered grievous losses in the short space of time the United States participated--19 months: 53,513 battle deaths, 63,195 other deaths and 204,002 wounded. Even so, it did not take very long for the old men who create the wars that young men must fight to stir up another one. In fact, the peace bought by the generation that fought and died in the First World War lasted only from 1918 to 1939--a mere twenty-one years. Twenty years is about what demographers regard as the interval between generations, and another generation had come along ready for the slaughter.
On April 6, 1917, when the U.S. declared war against Germany, its regular army was on a par with that of Chile, Denmark and the Netherlands. All four countries shared 17th place among nations in tables of army size. By the standards of the armies fighting in Europe, the U.S. Army was unimpressive both in size and training. It was led by elderly officers who had achieved fame as Indian fighters and were close to retirement. Few of the 5,000 officers and 120,000 enlisted men had ever fired a shot in anger. The country also had a National Guard consisting of some 80,000 ill-trained and poorly equipped officers and enlisted men, many of whom regarded it as a social organization.
By the time of the Armistice, the United States had mobilized 58 divisions, of which 43 had been shipped overseas. Twelve were not active as combat units but were used to provide replacements in France. American divisions had some 27,000 combat troops, and were twice the nominal size of British, French or German divisions--mainly because of a lack of trained junior officers.
On April 6, 1917, when the U.S. declared war against Germany, its regular army was on a par with that of Chile, Denmark and the Netherlands. All four countries shared 17th place among nations in tables of army size. By the standards of the armies fighting in Europe, the U.S. Army was unimpressive both in size and training. It was led by elderly officers who had achieved fame as Indian fighters and were close to retirement. Few of the 5,000 officers and 120,000 enlisted men had ever fired a shot in anger. The country also had a National Guard consisting of some 80,000 ill-trained and poorly equipped officers and enlisted men, many of whom regarded it as a social organization.
By the time of the Armistice, the United States had mobilized 58 divisions, of which 43 had been shipped overseas. Twelve were not active as combat units but were used to provide replacements in France. American divisions had some 27,000 combat troops, and were twice the nominal size of British, French or German divisions--mainly because of a lack of trained junior officers.
Two out of every three American soldiers who reached France took part in action of some kind. In addition to the threat of being smashed and ripped apart by shrapnel from an incoming shell or cut down by merciless machine-gun fire, the average "doughboy" was perpetually at the mercy of the elements, the mud and the degradation of living in rat-infested tunnels and trenches into which poison gas could seep; his diet was unhealthy and his body was unwashed--grime and filth were everywhere, along with the stench of rotting dead bodies and the ubiquitous "cootie," or body louse, that infested his clothing.
Nevertheless, high-spirited American troops provided the fresh enthusiasm and surge of power needed by the battle-weary French and British soldiers to break the German Hindenburg Line. The process of turning America's paltry regular army into the strongest army on the European continent had been remarkable. Through careful planning, sheer determination and hard work, its small combat force grew tremendously. By the Armistice, a total of 1,962,767 American troops were in France, including 1,253,330 combatants. In a brief time, the United States had gone from a nation whose tiny army was not ready for battle to a world power.
In the 200 days between April 25, 1918--when the 1st Division entered the front line in Picardy--until the Armistice on November 11th, American forces participated in 13 battles as part of six major campaigns, and 136,516 Americans died. This number includes 4,452 who were counted as missing in action and whose remains were never found or could be identified. One of that number rests beneath a white marble tomb in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
The conclusion of the First World War gave birth to the holiday originally known as Armistice Day, now called Veterans Day. The celebration of that holiday had its origin in ceremonies that took place in Washington on November 11, 1921.
Choosing the First Unknown Soldier
The idea of honoring the unknown dead of the First World War originated in Europe. In 1921, America had still not formally honored its war dead. The year before, the British had already interred an unknown "Tommy" in Westminster Abbey to represent the hundreds of thousands that had perished in that conflict. Similarly, the French had honored an unknown "poilu" at the Arc de Triomphe.
When Brig. Gen. William D. Connor, commanding general of American forces in Europe, first learned of the French plans, he proposed a similar project to the U.S. Army's chief of staff, Gen. Peyton C. March. General March was not enthusiastic about the proposal, thinking it premature. Although the French and British had a great many unknown dead, he felt that the American Army's Graves Registration Service would eventually identify all American unknowns. He had been told by the Quartermaster General that only 1,271 American dead were still unidentified, and these were still being studied. General March's concern was that haste could result in the selection of a body that might later be identified.
On December 21, 1920, Congressman Hamilton Fish, Jr., of Putnam County, New York, had introduced a resolution in Congress calling for the return of the body of an unknown American soldier from France for burial with appropriate ceremonies in a tomb to be constructed at the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. The measure was approved on March 4, 1921. Congressman Fish wanted ceremonies to be held on Memorial Day of 1921, but Secretary of War Newton D. Baker thought the date too early. The Congressman tried again through the new Secretary of War, John W. Weeks, who replaced Baker on March 4, 1921, when President Warren G. Harding took office.
Four coffins were exhumed, one from each of four American military cemeteries, Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme and St. Mihiel, and were taken by truck to the city hall at Chalons-sur-Marne. A large group awaited them, including officers of the French Army, officials of Chalons-sur-Marne, the U.S. Army's Quartermaster General, and the chief of the Graves Registration Services in Europe. Major Robert P. Harbold was the officer in charge of the ceremony. Chalons-sur-Marne officials had prepared the city hall for the ceremony. The outside of the building had been draped with French and American flags. Inside, the halls and corridors were ornamented with potted palms and more flags. A catafalque--the stand on which a casket is placed--had been set up in the main hall. Another room was decorated to hold the caskets of the four unknown soldiers, and a third room was prepared in which the chosen Unknown Soldier would be transferred to a bronze casket shipped from the United States.
French troops carried the four shipping cases from the trucks to the city hall. The four caskets were then removed, set on top of the shipping cases and draped with American flags. Six American soldiers arrived from American headquarters in Coblenz, Germany. Early on the morning of October 24, Major Harbold, aided by French and American soldiers, rearranged the caskets so each rested on a shipping case other than the one in which it had arrived. Now there was little chance that anyone would know the cemetery from which the unidentified remains came.
Originally, a commissioned officer was to make the selection. The plan was changed when the Americans learned that the French had selected an enlisted man to choose their Unknown Soldier. Major Harbold selected Sergeant Younger, one of the men who had arrived from Coblenz, to perform that duty. Sgt. Younger had enlisted in the U.S. Army in February of 1917, two months before America entered the war. He had taken part in several engagements, including Chateau Thierry, the Somme, St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and had received the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart. At the end of the war, he reenlisted. After Sergeant Younger was mustered out of the Army in 1922, he often spoke before veterans groups about what happened in Chalons-sur-Marne. Returning to the Chicago area, he lived there until he died of a heart attack in 1942.
This is Sgt. Younger's story: "At first we (the six soldiers) had the idea that we were to be just pall bearers," Sgt. Younger said. "But when we lined up in the little makeshift chapel, Major Harbold, the officer in charge of graves registration, told us, 'One of you men is to be given the honor of selecting the body of the Unknown Soldier.' He had a large bouquet of pink and white roses in his arms. He finally handed the roses to me." The bouquet had been presented by a Frenchman who had lost two sons in the war. Younger was left alone in the quiet of the chapel with the four identical and unmarked coffins that fateful day, the 24th of October. "The one I placed the roses on was the one brought home and placed in the national shrine. I walked around the coffins three times, then suddenly I stopped. What caused me to stop, I don't know. It was as if something had pulled me. I placed the roses on the coffin in front of me." He concluded, "I can still remember the awed feeling I had, standing there alone." The caskets of the three unchosen unknowns were placed in shipping cases and taken by truck to the Meuse-Argonne American Military Cemetery for immediate reburial.
Coming home
The body Sgt. Younger had chosen as the Unknown Soldier lay in state for several hours, watched over by the small contingent of American and French soldiers. After brief tributes by the mayor of Chalons-sur-Marne and other officials, the casket was placed on a flag-draped gun carriage and escorted by French and American troops along the Rue de Marne to the railroad station. Unmounted French cavalry lined the route to the station. Still bearing the spray of roses, it was lifted aboard a special train for the journey to the port of Le Havre, by way of Paris. The train left Chalons-sur-Marne at 4:10 p.m. and arrived in Paris about three hours later. After ceremonies in Paris the next morning, the special train left Paris in midmorning and arrived at Le Havre about 1:00 p.m.
A procession took the body from the station to the Quai d'Escale, where the American cruiser Olympia was waiting. Launched in 1895, the Olympia, Admiral Dewey's flagship at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish-American War, was capable of doing only 20 knots. Reverently, the casket was placed on the flower-bedecked stern of the Olympia for the voyage back to America. Escorted by the American destroyer Reuben James, which would later become the first American warship to be sunk in the Second World War, and eight French naval vessels, the Olympia put to sea. She received a 17-gun salute as she cleared the harbor and another as the French ships dropped astern outside French waters.
After a voyage of 15 days, on a rainy November 9th, the Olympia steamed up the Potomac and reached the Washington Navy Yard at four p.m. As the casket was carried down the gangplank, the ship's band played Chopin's "Funeral March." From the Navy Yard, the casket was placed on a horse-drawn caisson and escorted to the Capitol, with the band of the 3rd Cavalry playing "Onward Christian Soldiers." and placed in the rotunda on the catafalque that had held the remains of assassinated Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. The body lay in state under a guard of honor composed of selected enlisted men of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Throughout the next day, November 10th, thousands passed before the casket to honor the Unknown Soldier. For them, many of whom had lost someone in the war, he symbolized the thousands of unidentified dead and the missing in action in the war that had ended three years before.
To Arlington Cemetery
At 8:30 on the morning of November 11th, the casket was taken from the Capitol and placed on a gun carriage for the journey through the streets of Washington to the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery. Following the caisson bearing the flag-draped coffin were the President, Warren G. Harding, the Vice-President, Calvin Coolidge, William Howard Taft, the ex-President and newly appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the associate justices, members of the diplomatic corps, Medal of Honor wearers, members of Congress, and various generals and admirals.
A field artillery battery near the Washington Monument began firing "minute guns" at one-minute intervals. Their salvos reverberated throughout Washington until the conclusion of the funeral ceremony at Arlington. At the White House, the President, Vice President, Chief Justice and members of the Senate and House left the procession and traveled by automobile to Arlington National Cemetery. At the Amphitheater, the casket was again placed on the catafalque. The President and Mrs. Harding arrived at 11:55 a.m., and the ceremonies began. The Marine Band played the National Anthem. The audience sang "America," after which President Harding delivered an address paying tribute to the Unknown Soldier and pleading for an end to war.
Nevertheless, high-spirited American troops provided the fresh enthusiasm and surge of power needed by the battle-weary French and British soldiers to break the German Hindenburg Line. The process of turning America's paltry regular army into the strongest army on the European continent had been remarkable. Through careful planning, sheer determination and hard work, its small combat force grew tremendously. By the Armistice, a total of 1,962,767 American troops were in France, including 1,253,330 combatants. In a brief time, the United States had gone from a nation whose tiny army was not ready for battle to a world power.
In the 200 days between April 25, 1918--when the 1st Division entered the front line in Picardy--until the Armistice on November 11th, American forces participated in 13 battles as part of six major campaigns, and 136,516 Americans died. This number includes 4,452 who were counted as missing in action and whose remains were never found or could be identified. One of that number rests beneath a white marble tomb in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
The conclusion of the First World War gave birth to the holiday originally known as Armistice Day, now called Veterans Day. The celebration of that holiday had its origin in ceremonies that took place in Washington on November 11, 1921.
Choosing the First Unknown Soldier
The idea of honoring the unknown dead of the First World War originated in Europe. In 1921, America had still not formally honored its war dead. The year before, the British had already interred an unknown "Tommy" in Westminster Abbey to represent the hundreds of thousands that had perished in that conflict. Similarly, the French had honored an unknown "poilu" at the Arc de Triomphe.
When Brig. Gen. William D. Connor, commanding general of American forces in Europe, first learned of the French plans, he proposed a similar project to the U.S. Army's chief of staff, Gen. Peyton C. March. General March was not enthusiastic about the proposal, thinking it premature. Although the French and British had a great many unknown dead, he felt that the American Army's Graves Registration Service would eventually identify all American unknowns. He had been told by the Quartermaster General that only 1,271 American dead were still unidentified, and these were still being studied. General March's concern was that haste could result in the selection of a body that might later be identified.
On December 21, 1920, Congressman Hamilton Fish, Jr., of Putnam County, New York, had introduced a resolution in Congress calling for the return of the body of an unknown American soldier from France for burial with appropriate ceremonies in a tomb to be constructed at the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. The measure was approved on March 4, 1921. Congressman Fish wanted ceremonies to be held on Memorial Day of 1921, but Secretary of War Newton D. Baker thought the date too early. The Congressman tried again through the new Secretary of War, John W. Weeks, who replaced Baker on March 4, 1921, when President Warren G. Harding took office.
Four coffins were exhumed, one from each of four American military cemeteries, Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme and St. Mihiel, and were taken by truck to the city hall at Chalons-sur-Marne. A large group awaited them, including officers of the French Army, officials of Chalons-sur-Marne, the U.S. Army's Quartermaster General, and the chief of the Graves Registration Services in Europe. Major Robert P. Harbold was the officer in charge of the ceremony. Chalons-sur-Marne officials had prepared the city hall for the ceremony. The outside of the building had been draped with French and American flags. Inside, the halls and corridors were ornamented with potted palms and more flags. A catafalque--the stand on which a casket is placed--had been set up in the main hall. Another room was decorated to hold the caskets of the four unknown soldiers, and a third room was prepared in which the chosen Unknown Soldier would be transferred to a bronze casket shipped from the United States.
French troops carried the four shipping cases from the trucks to the city hall. The four caskets were then removed, set on top of the shipping cases and draped with American flags. Six American soldiers arrived from American headquarters in Coblenz, Germany. Early on the morning of October 24, Major Harbold, aided by French and American soldiers, rearranged the caskets so each rested on a shipping case other than the one in which it had arrived. Now there was little chance that anyone would know the cemetery from which the unidentified remains came.
Originally, a commissioned officer was to make the selection. The plan was changed when the Americans learned that the French had selected an enlisted man to choose their Unknown Soldier. Major Harbold selected Sergeant Younger, one of the men who had arrived from Coblenz, to perform that duty. Sgt. Younger had enlisted in the U.S. Army in February of 1917, two months before America entered the war. He had taken part in several engagements, including Chateau Thierry, the Somme, St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and had received the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart. At the end of the war, he reenlisted. After Sergeant Younger was mustered out of the Army in 1922, he often spoke before veterans groups about what happened in Chalons-sur-Marne. Returning to the Chicago area, he lived there until he died of a heart attack in 1942.
This is Sgt. Younger's story: "At first we (the six soldiers) had the idea that we were to be just pall bearers," Sgt. Younger said. "But when we lined up in the little makeshift chapel, Major Harbold, the officer in charge of graves registration, told us, 'One of you men is to be given the honor of selecting the body of the Unknown Soldier.' He had a large bouquet of pink and white roses in his arms. He finally handed the roses to me." The bouquet had been presented by a Frenchman who had lost two sons in the war. Younger was left alone in the quiet of the chapel with the four identical and unmarked coffins that fateful day, the 24th of October. "The one I placed the roses on was the one brought home and placed in the national shrine. I walked around the coffins three times, then suddenly I stopped. What caused me to stop, I don't know. It was as if something had pulled me. I placed the roses on the coffin in front of me." He concluded, "I can still remember the awed feeling I had, standing there alone." The caskets of the three unchosen unknowns were placed in shipping cases and taken by truck to the Meuse-Argonne American Military Cemetery for immediate reburial.
Coming home
The body Sgt. Younger had chosen as the Unknown Soldier lay in state for several hours, watched over by the small contingent of American and French soldiers. After brief tributes by the mayor of Chalons-sur-Marne and other officials, the casket was placed on a flag-draped gun carriage and escorted by French and American troops along the Rue de Marne to the railroad station. Unmounted French cavalry lined the route to the station. Still bearing the spray of roses, it was lifted aboard a special train for the journey to the port of Le Havre, by way of Paris. The train left Chalons-sur-Marne at 4:10 p.m. and arrived in Paris about three hours later. After ceremonies in Paris the next morning, the special train left Paris in midmorning and arrived at Le Havre about 1:00 p.m.
A procession took the body from the station to the Quai d'Escale, where the American cruiser Olympia was waiting. Launched in 1895, the Olympia, Admiral Dewey's flagship at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish-American War, was capable of doing only 20 knots. Reverently, the casket was placed on the flower-bedecked stern of the Olympia for the voyage back to America. Escorted by the American destroyer Reuben James, which would later become the first American warship to be sunk in the Second World War, and eight French naval vessels, the Olympia put to sea. She received a 17-gun salute as she cleared the harbor and another as the French ships dropped astern outside French waters.
After a voyage of 15 days, on a rainy November 9th, the Olympia steamed up the Potomac and reached the Washington Navy Yard at four p.m. As the casket was carried down the gangplank, the ship's band played Chopin's "Funeral March." From the Navy Yard, the casket was placed on a horse-drawn caisson and escorted to the Capitol, with the band of the 3rd Cavalry playing "Onward Christian Soldiers." and placed in the rotunda on the catafalque that had held the remains of assassinated Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. The body lay in state under a guard of honor composed of selected enlisted men of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Throughout the next day, November 10th, thousands passed before the casket to honor the Unknown Soldier. For them, many of whom had lost someone in the war, he symbolized the thousands of unidentified dead and the missing in action in the war that had ended three years before.
To Arlington Cemetery
At 8:30 on the morning of November 11th, the casket was taken from the Capitol and placed on a gun carriage for the journey through the streets of Washington to the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery. Following the caisson bearing the flag-draped coffin were the President, Warren G. Harding, the Vice-President, Calvin Coolidge, William Howard Taft, the ex-President and newly appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the associate justices, members of the diplomatic corps, Medal of Honor wearers, members of Congress, and various generals and admirals.
A field artillery battery near the Washington Monument began firing "minute guns" at one-minute intervals. Their salvos reverberated throughout Washington until the conclusion of the funeral ceremony at Arlington. At the White House, the President, Vice President, Chief Justice and members of the Senate and House left the procession and traveled by automobile to Arlington National Cemetery. At the Amphitheater, the casket was again placed on the catafalque. The President and Mrs. Harding arrived at 11:55 a.m., and the ceremonies began. The Marine Band played the National Anthem. The audience sang "America," after which President Harding delivered an address paying tribute to the Unknown Soldier and pleading for an end to war.
The President then conferred upon the Unknown Soldier the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross. Representatives of foreign governments in turn conferred upon the Unknown Soldier the highest military decorations of their nations. These included Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Congressman Fish, who had introduced the legislation to memorialize the unknown American dead, laid a wreath at the tomb. Among others who paid tribute was Chief Plenty Coups, representing Native Americans, who placed his war bonnet and coup stick at the tomb.
As the casket was lowered into the crypt, the bottom of which had been covered with a layer of French soil, the saluting battery of guns fired three salvos. A bugler then sounded taps, and the battery fired 21 guns to salute the Unknown Soldier of the First World War.
America's Belated Recognition of Armistice Day
The awful carnage of World War I ended with an armistice at eleven o'clock on the morning on November 11, 1918. Yet Congress did not get around to recognizing that event as Armistice Day until June 4, 1926, when it passed a resolution asking the President to issue a formal proclamation calling upon people to display the flag and observe November 11th with appropriate ceremonies.
By then 27 states were already observing the date as a legal holiday. Congress was also slow in making it a federal legal holiday. That did not happen until May 13, 1938. The holiday was intended to honor veterans of the First World War, but it was not until June 4, 1954--after the Second World War and the Korean War--that Congress amended the 1938 legislation, substituting the words Veterans Day for Armistice Day.
In 1968, a Uniform Holiday bill was signed on June 28, giving federal employees a three-day weekend by celebrating four national holidays on Mondays: Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Columbus Day. The idea was that extended weekends would encourage travel, and recreational activities. The hope also was that it would stimulate greater industrial and commercial activity. It achieved none of these goals, and only diverted attention from the significance of the holiday. Many states refused to accept this unwelcome change and continued to celebrate the four holidays on their original dates.
The first Veterans Day under the new law was observed on October 25, 1971, with much confusion and dissatisfaction. Many patriotic and veterans organizations were unhappy with the change. However, it would take five years before their discontent had an effect. On September 20, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford signed a new law returning Veterans Day to November 11th--to become effective the following year. Veterans Day has been celebrated on November 11th ever since.
Later History of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
During the tomb's early years after 1921, only a civilian watchman protected the site. In 1926, a formal military guard was established--but only during daylight hours when the cemetery was open to the public. The original intention was for the simple white marble sarcophagus should be the base for an appropriate monument. It was not until July 3, 1926, that Congress authorized the completion of the tomb.
A competition was held among architects. Seventy-four designs were submitted anonymously, with the names of each architect in a sealed envelope. Five were chosen as finalists, from which group one was selected. The successful design turned out to be that of architect Lorimer Rich. It called for a tomb measuring 11 feet in height, 8 feet in width and almost 14 feet in length.
The tomb. of glaring white marble, weighs 79 tons. It is sometimes describes as being made of Vermont marble. The stone was actually quarried in Yule, Colorado. The error arises because the quarry was owned by the Vermont Marble Company. The severity of the design was relieved by Doric pilasters in low relief at the corners and carved motifs along the sides. Sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones carved the designs and figures on the tomb, completing his work on December 31, 1931. On the front are three figures representing Peace, Valor and Victory. Six inverted mourning wreaths on the sides mark the six major campaigns of the war in which American troops participated. The simple sentiment, "HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD" also appears. (This replicates the sentiment carved on the gravestones of all unknown dead in American military cemeteries in Europe.) The first 24-hour military guard began in 1937 and continues to this day. The "spit-and-polish" 3rd U.S. Infantry (The Old Guard) assumed responsibility for guarding the tomb in 1948.
After the Second World War, planning began for the interment of a second Unknown. This tomb, an identical copy of the original was to be located on the mall area of the cemetery in 1951. Unfortunately, the Korean War interfered with these plans and selection of an unknown serviceman from World War II was deferred. Following the cease fire in Korea in 1953, Congress authorized the honoring of two unknown dead--one from World War II and one from the Korean War. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the enabling legislation on August 3, 1956.
The remains of 8,526 World War II dead and 848 Korean War dead had been unidentifiable and buried as unknowns. Following the precedent established after the First World War, one body was selected from 13 unidentified bodies exhumed from military cemeteries in the European Theater of World War II and one body from six bodies from cemeteries in the Pacific Theater. From these, the bodies of two and then one unknown World War II serviceman were selected. Almost simultaneously, an unknown from the Korean War was selected from among four exhumed from the unidentified dead of that war interred in military cemeteries. Ceremonies were held on May 30, 1958, and the two unknowns were interred in crypts near the original 1921 interment.
After the end of the Vietnam War in 1973, Congress authorized the interment of an unknown serviceman from that conflict. A new crypt was ordered to be constructed between the graves of the World War II and Korean War Unknowns. Plans for a burial were suspended, however, because sophisticated identification techniques had resulted in the identification of almost all remains returned from Vietnam. It was not until 1984 that one body was certified as unidentifiable. These remains arrived in Washington on May 25 and lay in state in the Capitol for three days. On May 28, 1984, the remains were borne by horse-drawn caisson to Arlington National Cemetery. President Ronald Reagan presented the Medal of Honor to the unknown Vietnam War serviceman.
Paradoxically, advances in DNA testing led to the disinterment of the Vietnam War Unknown four years later in a solemn ceremony May 14, 1988. Forensic tests confirmed the remains to be those of Air Force 1st Lieutenant Michael Joseph Blassie, an Air Force Academy graduate, shot down near An Loc, Vietnam, in 1972. At the request of his family, Lt. Blassie's remains were transferred to the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri. It was decided that the crypt of the Vietnam Unknown would remain empty as a reminder of the many servicemen who were missing in action or whose bodies were never recovered.
The cover on the Vietnam crypt was rededicated September 17, 1999. The first female sentinel appeared at the tomb on March 25, 1996.
Epilogue
Since the end of the Second World War, we have endured a number of undeclared wars with unclear aims. Most notable among these is the Vietnam War. A black granite wall bears in its smooth surface the names of 58,195 who sacrificed their lives. It includes the names of 2,504 missing in action whose bodies have never been recovered.
We again find ourselves engaged in another war, this time against a shadowy, tenacious enemy. Other than "ridding the world of terrorism," our aims are unclear, This generation has already suffered thousands of innocents killed or missing in New York and Washington; 40,000 more service members have been killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who is there among us who will deny that this generation has already shown itself to be another great generation? Now, and in our continuing time of trial, we can all resolve that these sacrifices shall not have been in vain, recalling the fourth verse of "For the Fallen," a poem by British poet Lawrence Binyon. When the war the British still denominate as "the Great War" began in 1914, Binyon was working in the British Museum. He later served as a Red Cross orderly on the Western Front. His words are timeless.
They shall not grow old,
As we who are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them.
As we who are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them.
Appendix: The Human Cost of America's Participation in World War One
The following table shows the numbers of dead buried in the eight World War One American Military Cemeteries in Europe. Each cemetery has a chapel on whose walls are inscribed the names of those who were missing in action or whose remains could not be identified. As the numbers of living World War One veterans and their next-of-kin dwindle, these cemeteries attract fewer visitors each year. The graves, marked by white marble crosses and Stars of David, are carefully tended.
Among the 136,516 Americans who died in the 19 months that America participated in the First World War, 4,452 were declared missing in action; their remans could not be identified or were never found. The next-of-kin of 101,143 dead servicemen chose to have their remains returned to the United States for burial. The next-of-kin of 30,921 war dead elected to have their remains buried in Europe.
A Directory of First World War American Cemeteries in Europe
The following information is from the American Battle Monuments Commission:
FRANCE
Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery
Romagne-sous-Montfaucon (Meuse), about 160 miles from Paris
14,246 graves; 954 MIA
Oise-Aisne American Cemetery
Fere-en-Tardenois (Aisne), about 60 miles from Paris
6,012 graves; 241 MIA
St. Mihiel American Cemetery
Thiaucourt (Meurthe-et-Moselle), about 20 miles from Metz
4,153 graves; 284 MIA
Aisne-Marne American Cemetery
Belleau (Aisne), about 60 miles from Paris
2,289 graves, 1,060 MIA
Somme American Cemetery
Bony (Aisne), about 100 miles from Paris
1,844 graves; 333 MIA
Suresnes American Cemetery
Suresnes (Seine), 5 miles west of Paris
1,541 graves, 974 MIA, or lost or buried at sea
BELGIUM
Flanders Field American Cemetery
Waregem, Belgium, 46 miles west of Brussels
368 graves; 43 MIA
ENGLAND
Brookwood American Cemetery
Brookwood, England, about 28 miles from London
468 graves; 563 MIA, or lost or buried at sea
Labels: Armistice Day, First World War, History, Holidays, Unknown Soldier, Veterans Day
