The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-05-01

Exclusive service the Survey Press Blu
reau)
The Municipal Art society Of New
York, an organisation of artists, afchf-
tests, 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 Fl.
Hartman, widow of the great financier,
has offered to give the state. The mat
ter is now before the legislature, backed
by Governor Hughes.
The Hartman country place, stun
ming tract of 10000 acres, is offered entire
for the park. Mrs. Hartman offers be-
sides a million dollars in cash to buy adj
joining territory, and other public-spirited
men and women have Clipped in an ad-
ditional $1.s25,000 This would buy land
clear through to the Hudson. extend all
around the Military academy at West
Point except the river side, and by hitch
ing up to the Palisades park. give long
narrow park on the Palisades and in the
Highlands from opposite both street.
New York, clear up to Nyack. 1t would
below the Catskills-Hook mountain,
Dunderbery, Stony Point and Highland
Lake This country has been the sum-
mer home of millionaires for years. Now
it is 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 rugged. heavily
wooded, full Of tumbling creeks, alto
gether delightful valleys, green cups in
the hills, faint trails where roads once
ran and what to an eye accustomed to
skyscrapers and asphalt seem bits of the
forest primeval. The Ramapos are too
steep and rocky for farming and this,
coupled with fact that great tracts have
been held in rich mems estates, probably
explains their remaining SO long UNI
spoiled by New York City, ninety minutes
away by rail.
A days tramp through the Ramapos
dra WIS many men anc not a few stout
booted women out of New York. An
hour and half by train and half as much
more I'D g. meandering road toward the
nearest gap in the hills leave one on his
own resources in the woods The govern
ment maps shows good roads, but at
every turn they fade away into nothing.
In the very middle Of where the road
should be- stands flourishing maple
eighteen inches thick. These were the
roads that Washington,s soldiers
marched on after 7e and precious little
use have they had since.
An hours walk from Suffern, just
across the line in New York after Jersey
Is passed, lies u deserted settlement
Rough houses falling apart. log barns,
crumbling fences. fields grown up to
scrub oak. give the feeling tnat mere
surely stood one Of those pitiful new
towns cleaned out to the last soul py
the indians.
souatters abound-called locally the
Jackson whites Negro features with
black hair sometimes straight ana some
times very curly, add weight to the tradi-
tiol. that white and black and red Diood
ruiz In their veins. Tradition goes step
further and claims that the wnlte nloou
Is German, from the Hessian mefcen-
aries brought here by the British Some
Of them deserted and some were dis
charged in the new country after the
!, euolution. but they found a cold wei
Aor,e even In tory New York and New
Jersey They drifted back to the nils
where they had fought or run, ana there
took wives among tne WoiiS1' VI '''S
souatters who were part negro ana part
Indian. ~ ..a
81 tradition has it. At any rate, on the
davis walk one comes on little clearings
with a makeshift house, a pig some
chickens, potato patch, untaikative men
and women, children who nave never
been To school Perhaps only a footpatn'
where the map shows road ieaas
twisting off 20 the nearest town, and the
s,r,attn father does not know even the
nan,a Of the village beyond that.
Tho ,mportance Of all this Is pretty
c,sar when II is remembered that New
York city really extends a long way
outside the city limits. 1t has outgrown
its clothes like any schoolboy and follows
MI the railroads for many miles IN more
or less continuous strings of SUBURBAN
towns. BY 1920 the city will have pop
ulation of ten million people and the
strings of villages will have grown to-
rether and broadened, improved rapid
transit will extend the suburban zone and
tho New Yorker will be more Of a city
man than ever.
There are few places near New York