The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-04-23
A PEOPLES PLAYGROUND
 ON THE PALISADES
State of New York Asked to Furnish Public Camp Sites Up In the Highlands of the Hudson Where Washington Fought the Hessians
B. Stagg whitin.

B. Stagg whitin.
 Exclusive Service The Survey Press Bureau9
 The Municipal Art Society of New
 York, an organization of artists. arch
 itects, engineers, landscape architects
 and the like, has started something
 brand new in putting it up to the
 State of New York to establish public
 camp sites in the big new park which
 Mrs. Edward H. Hartman, widow of
 the great financier. has offered to give
 the state. The matter is now before
 the Legislature, backed by Governor
 Hughes.
 The Hartman country place, stun
 entire for the park Mrs. Hartman
 offers besides a million dollars in
 cash to buy adjoining territory, and
 other pub1ic-spirited men and women
 GOO. This would buy land clear
 through to the Hudson, extend all
 Point except on the river side and.
 by hitching up to the Palisades Park,
 give 8 long narrow park on the Pali-
 sades and in the Highlands from op- clear up to Nyanck. It would include four of the most famous places below the Catskil1s, Hook Mountain, Stony Point, Dunderberg and Highland Lake. This country has been the summer home of millionaires for years. Now is it proposed to make it available for all the people.
 The plan will bring to the very doors of New York City tract all but wild. While the Ramapo mountains, parts of which are included and more of which will probably be bought, range only from 1000 feet up, they are rug ged. heavily wooded, full of tumbling creeks, altogether delightful valleys. green cups in the hills, faint trails r1nT.o 7 nan zI1lf fr in eye accustomed to skScrapers and as- phalt seem bits. of the forest prime val. The Ramapos are too steep and rocky for farming and this, coupled with the fact that great tracts have been held in rich mems estates, prob ably explains their remaining so long unspoiled by New York City. ninety minutes away by rail.
 A days tramp through the Ramapos draws many men and not few stout booted women out of New York. An hour and half by train and half as much more up meandering road to- ward the nearest gap in the hills leave one on his own resources in the woods. The government maps show good away into nothing. In the very mid- de of where the road should be, inches thick. These were the roads that Washington's soldiers marched on after '76 and precious little use have they had since. A across the line in New York after Jersey is passed, lies a deserted set clement. Rough houses falling apart, log barns, crumbling fences, fields grown up to scrub oak, give the feel ing that here surely stood one of those pitifuI new towns cleaned out to the last soul by the Indians.
 Suuatters abound-caIled locally the Jackson whites. Negro features with black hair, sometimes straight and sometimes very curly, add Welght to red blood run in their veins. Tradi- tions goes a step further and claims that the white blood is German, from the Hessian mercenaries brought here by the British. Some of them desert ed and some vera discharged in the new country after the Revolution. but tory New York and New Jersey. They 1rifted back to the hills where they had fought or run, and there took wives among the women of the squat -ers who were part Negro and part indian.
 So tradition has it. At any rate, on .he days walk one comes on little l ,learings with a makeshift house, a | pig, some, chickens, a potato patch, 1 men and women, children who have never been to school. Per 1aps only a footpath, where the map shows a road, leads twisting off to the 1 nearest town, and the mu1atto Father | foes not know even the name of the | 7il age beyond that.
 InGa important or HI lfL1SS pretty dear when it is remembered that New York City really extends a long way 1 outside the city limits. It has out 1 srown it's clothes like any schoolboy md follows all the railroads for many niles in more or less continuous trings of suburban towns. By 1920 he city will have a population of ten million people and the strings of vi1- ages will have grown together and ,roadened, improved rapid transit will xtend the suburban zone and the Iew Yorker Will be more of a city nan than ever.
 There are few places near New fork where campers can pitch a tent nd fish as they do around smaller faces. So it is proposed that the State lay the part of good-natured farm r and let the city people camp out n it's park. A good deal of the park annot be used in this way as it drains 1to city and village water supplies, ut manly parts can. The plan is to am small creeks to make a good rater supply for the campers and car V off refuse to the river, and other Tise lay out camps in the midst of ome of the most beautiful woods in .merfca In the winter there will be ne skating, snowshoeing and tobog- aning. 1