Fahnestock Gravel: 10/12/24 Ancient Paths to Modern Roads

[jamesdeluxe]

Hall of Fame-worthy, both the ride and the time/effort to post this monster report.

 

[jasonwx]

Just WOW!!!.... thanks for the history lesson.

 

[SlowPokePete]

@Ripitz are you on Strava?

SPP

 

[Ripitz]

@Ripitz are you on Strava?

SPP

I am, but I don’t share, except for here with an occasional screenshot.

 

[Peter Minde]

Love the photos and story, @Ripitz .

 

[Ripitz]

Laura Zimmerman and Rob Buchanan have done a lot of local investigations along with Glenn Kreisberg in the Catskills. Check out NEARA, the New England Antiquities Research Association. They are spearheading the effort for research and better understanding.

New England Antiquities Research Association

Rock Piles, Standing Stones, Perched Boulders, Balanced Rocks, Rocking Stones, Chambers, Niches, Stone Circles, Stone Rows, Rock Art, Petroglyphs, Indian Forts, Ceremonial Stone Landscapes, Mounds, and Unusual Earthworks

neara.org

The Overlook Mountain Center has preserved spirit stone structures in Lewis Hollow in the Catskills.

Home - Overlook Mountain Center

Great podcast about the work being done here.

https://www.kaatscast.com/overlooks-spirit-stones-investigating-the-indigenous/[/URL

 

[Low Angle Life]

Thanks for posting this @Brownski, the bit about "the Ramapo walls" was really interesting to me. I worked in Sloatsburg for some time and got really familiar with the landscape and the locals, many of whom had a distinct interest in the local geology and pre-colonial history of the area. I knew a group who used to conduct spiritual rituals on a property in town which they claimed to have an intense energy and portal like qualities. At the time I wrote it off as some new-age type none sense but this adds an entirely different context to what members of this group had told me, further down the rabbit hole...

 

[Campgottagopee]

Thanks for taking the time

Total badassary

 

[tirolski]

Nice trip Mr. Rip.
Thanks for sharing your pics & writeup.

Read it today, “Columbus Day”, ironically.

 

[Ripitz]

Read it today, “Columbus Day”, ironically.

Yes, Tski, thank you for pointing this out. I had been planning this trip for quite some time and thought this weekend would be an appropriate time to pay homage.

All of the land on my journey, both public and private, was once the ancestral homeland of indigenous people. Most importantly, we must understand that it still is today. The Wiccopee were a clan of the Wappinger who lived sustainably in this area for thousands of years. They were great stewards of the land. Disease is often attributed to their demise but they were also dispersed, enslaved, starved and slaughtered. The least we can do is have a day to honor them and grieve their loss.

From the Putnam County Historian’s Office;

• Putnam’s Origins, 1691-1776 ​

  When the Half Moon anchored in the Hudson in 1609, the area on the east bank was inhabited by a band of Native Americans called the Wappingers, sometimes known as the “River Indians”. This group of Munsee-speaking Delawares farmed in the valleys, hunted in the forests and swamps, and gathered shellfish in the Hudson estuary in the land that would become Putnam County. No European settlements are known to have occurred here during the 17th century, but the Wappingers had regular contact with Dutch traders from whom they acquired trade goods in return for beaver pelts. They also acquired disease, alcohol, and firearms, decimating their people.
  
  
  
  
  
  Adolph Philipse, patentee
  
  
  In 1691, two Dutch traders purchased a portion what would become Putnam County from the Wappingers for a “competent” sum of money. Six years later, the traders sold it to Adolph Philipse, a wealthy merchant, who then obtained a royal patent for land extending all the way from the Hudson to the Connecticut border, an area to be known as the Philipse Patent.
  In 1737, the Colonial Assembly designated the Philipse Patent as the South Precinct of Dutchess County, and the Philipses began leasing farms to immigrants from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Long Island and lower Westchester. After Adolph Philipse’s death, the Patent was divided in 1754 into nine lots granted to three heirs, Mary Philipse, Philip Philipse, and Susannah Philipse Robinson. During the French and Indian War, many of the Wappingers went to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. (Thereafter, they were often known as Stockbridge Indians or Stockbridge Mahicans.) When the Wappingers returned to Putnam after the war and attempted to regain the land that the Philipses had been leasing to others, they brought suit. Their sachem Daniel Nimham argued with considerable justification that they had been defrauded of their lands, the Provincial Council, dominated by great families like the Philipses, upheld the Philipse claims.