“The high rents and general congestion in New York City and vicinity are driving people into the country. Most of the purchases of real estate in our village of late have been by city people.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Where is Our Historian? follows staff historian Bill Merchant’s exploration of the remains of the 108-mile D&H Canal from Honesdale, PA to the Rondout in Kingston. The D&H Canal Virtual Museum is a tour that highlights the exhibits in the current museum. You can ask questions every Sunday at 2 p.m. on the D&H Facebook Live show, Sunday Afternoons With Our Historian.
The Friends of Historic Saugerties has cancelled its history talks that were planned for May and June. The group does
Joining other institutions, Historic Huguenot Street has launched a new online programming initiative that includes videos, hands-on activities, special deals from the museum shop, and new ways to participate and explore its exhibitions, archives and collection.
This is not the first time that Highland Central School District has been closed for a pandemic and had to turn to “distance learning” to keep their students engaged in their schoolwork. During a pandemic in 1957 that closed their schools for a period of time, a two-cent stamp and a postcard served as their distance learning tools during the closure.
The world hasn’t seen a pandemic like this one in 100 years. With luck, in a year or two life
A contemporaneous account from the pages of the New Paltz Independent and Times.
Topics include: Highland businessmen refuse to accept daylight savings; bluebirds and robins cheer locals; please keep your chickens home; first shad caught; and more.
The Great Chain could be dismantled and pulled ashore in winter, when the Hudson wasn’t navigable anyway, to protect it from being smashed apart by tide-tossed icebergs. Its placement in the river could also be adjusted using a pulley system. Just downriver, a second barrier of wooden booms was floated, making it nearly impossible for a ship to get up enough momentum to break through the chain – although the notorious traitor Benedict Arnold had advised the British that they could, when he handed over the plans to the fortification at West Point. They never tried.
The abandoned mansion is off the beaten path, seemingly stuck in a time when the Hudson Valley was a sleepy backwater. The Point, as it is known, is sequestered at the end of a winding road in a forested section of Mills-Norrie State Park, located in Staatsburg. It’s set at an angle on a high promontory of the Hudson River, which glimmers through the thick growth of trees. The windows are boarded up, the roof of the large stone portico at the entrance has half collapsed, the porch is gone and the bare lawn is surrounded by a utilitarian chain-link fence; yet the Gothic-style building, with its tall gables graced by carved verge boards, bay windows and squared-off, compact mass, exudes an echo of fairytale magic. Constructed of bluestone, whose soft, faded gray tones blend in with the site, the house has a cottagelike intimacy.