Dunderberg Mountain is a mountain on the west bank of the
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...
at the southern end of the
Hudson Highlands
The Hudson Highlands are mountains on both sides of the Hudson River in New York state lying primarily in Putnam County on its east bank and Orange County on its west. They continue somewhat to the south in Westchester County and Rockland County ...
. It lies just above
Jones Point, New York
Jones Point is a former Hamlet (New York), hamlet located in the town of Stony Point, New York, Stony Point in Rockland County in the state of New York (state), New York, United States, located north of Tomkins Cove, New York, Tomkins Cove; east o ...
, within
Bear Mountain State Park
Bear Mountain State Park is a state park located on the west bank of the Hudson River in Rockland and Orange counties, New York. The park offers biking, hiking, boating, picnicking, swimming, cross-country skiing, cross-country running, sledd ...
and the town of
Stony Point in
Rockland County, New York
Rockland County is the southernmost county on the west side of the Hudson River in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the New York metropolitan area. It is about from the Bronx at their closest points. The county's population, as of t ...
.
Dunderberg (also historically Donderberg) is a Dutch word, meaning "thunder mountain," so called by the early Dutch settlers because of the frequent thunderstorms in the vicinity.
Geography
The bulk of Dunderberg projects into the Hudson River, which describes an arc about its eastern side. Tidal marshes of the river, Snake Hole Creek and
Iona Island, lie to the north. On the northwestern side is the abandoned hamlet of
Doodletown. At Dunderberg's immediate southern slope is the Hudson River, while to the southwest are outlying neighborhoods of
Tomkins Cove
Tomkins Cove is a hamlet in the Town of Stony Point, Rockland County, New York, United States, located north of Stony Point; east of Harriman State Park; south of Doodletown and west of the Hudson River. It is located north-northwest of New Yo ...
, a community or segment of Stony Point.
The mountain as labeled on current U.S. Geological Survey maps and a widely used hiking map, extends about a mile and a half from its easternmost footing on the river at Jones Point. But several summits lying still farther to the west and southwest are evidently part of the Dunderberg formation, or massif, as described by at least some editions of an influential area hiking guidebook.
These include Bald Mountain or Bockberg (1,130 feet (344 m)), as well as the Timp (984 feet (300m)), each of which are, however, separately named by the USGS. The Boulderberg, labeled as such on certain maps of historical interest, lies a short distance to the south of the Timp.
As Dunderberg's crest runs inland latitudinally from the river, Timp Brook splits it into northerly and southerly ridges; Bald Mountain lies at the end of the northerly ridge, while the Timp terminates the southerly ridge about two-and a half miles southwest of Jones Point. Timp Brook emerges from a small swamp between the two ridges to flow down steeply to the north around Bald Mountain and thence to the northeast, into the valley known as Doodletown Clove between West Mountain and Dunderberg.
Closely following the upper course of Timp Brook was once the main route into Doodletown from the southwest. A half-mile farther west, an old farm road, later used as a fire road and now a foot-path, also enters Doodletown valley, through a narrow gap known as Timp Pass between the Timp and West Mountain. However, since the late 19th century, the main road up the Hudson (now 9W) has circled around the base of Dunderberg near the river.
History
Revolutionary War
Dunderberg was a landmark for British forces during the
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...
, as troops moved over a pass to the west of the mountain while marching to
attack Forts Clinton and Montgomery in 1777.
In a report to General
William Howe several days after the Oct. 6, 1777 attack, the British commander
Sir Henry Clinton wrote that at daybreak, 2,100 troops disembarked from vessels at Stony Point:
The Avant Garde of 500 Regulars & 400 Provincials ... began its March to occupy the Pass of Thunder Hill; this Avant Garde after it had passed that Mountain, was to proceed by a detour of seven Miles round the Hill ear Mountain and Debouchée in the Rear of Fort Montgomery, while General Vaughan
Vaughan () (2021 population 323,103) is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located in the Regional Municipality of York, just north of Toronto. Vaughan was the fastest-growing municipality in Canada between 1996 and 2006 with its population increas ...
, with 1200 Men was to continue his March towards Fort Clinton ... Major General Tryon with the Remainder, being the Rear Guard, to leave a Battalion at the Pass of Thunder Hill to open our Communication with the Fleet...
Sir Henry's "Pass of Thunder Hill" apparently stood between what is now called Bald Mountain and the Timp, about a mile southwest of the westerly summit of Dunderberg. It lies about a half-mile east of what is now called Timp Pass.
The modern 1777 Trail commemorates Sir Henry's route, and was built in 1974–75 as a joint project of the Rockland County Boy Scouts, the Palisades Interstate Park, the Rockland County Cooperative Extension and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. The route was determined by Jack Mead of the Trailside Museum at Bear Mountain from British military records and maps drawn by Major Robert Erskine, Surveyor General of the Continental Army.
Anthony Wayne
Anthony Wayne (January 1, 1745 – December 15, 1796) was an American soldier, officer, statesman, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He adopted a military career at the outset of the American Revolutionary War, where his mil ...
, in his successful
attack on Stony Point in 1779, used a route that entirely avoids the Dunderberg area, passing nearly two miles to the west of the Timp. A contemporary trail commemorates Wayne's route and is mapped by the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference.
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Spiral Railway Corp.
In 1889, the Dunderberg Spiral Railway Corporation formed with the goal of building a hotel at the top of Dunderberg.
Tourists were to reach the hotel by means of a steam-powered railway. For the descent, the cars would be
powered simply by gravity as the track wound its way back to the base of the mountain, like a
roller coaster
A roller coaster, or rollercoaster, is a type of amusement ride that employs a form of elevated railroad track designed with tight turns, steep slopes, and sometimes inversions. Passengers ride along the track in open cars, and the rides are o ...
, affording scenic views of the Hudson and reaching speeds of up to .
Directors of the Dunderberg corporation included Henry J. Mumford, who with his brother H.L. Mumford, operated the former
Mauch Chunk Railroad of similar design as a successful and well-known tourist attraction during the 1870s in what is now
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
Jim Thorpe is a borough and the county seat of Carbon County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is historically known as the burial site of Native American sports legend Jim Thorpe.
Jim Thorpe is loc ...
. The Mauch Chunk Railroad, originally designed for a coal mine, became the inspiration for modern amusement park
roller coaster
A roller coaster, or rollercoaster, is a type of amusement ride that employs a form of elevated railroad track designed with tight turns, steep slopes, and sometimes inversions. Passengers ride along the track in open cars, and the rides are o ...
s.
Funding for the Dunderberg project ran out in 1891 and the system was never completed; the reasons for the failure remain unclear.
One theory holds that the facility was planned as part of the
Columbian Exposition of 1893
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...
.
[ Verplanck's Point (south of ]Peekskill
Peekskill is a city in northwestern Westchester County, New York, United States, from New York City. Established as a village in 1816, it was incorporated as a city in 1940. It lies on a bay along the east side of the Hudson River, across fr ...
) is said to have been considered as a possible location during the planning stage of the Exposition, and it is possible that the funding for the hotel and the railway collapsed after Congress awarded the location to Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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instead. Although the theory is persistent, no clear documentation has been found to support it.
Today, ruins and some signs of the Spiral Railway construction are still visible. The graded areas can be accessed from the Ramapo-Dunderberg and the Timp-Torne trails, and became somewhat popular for walking following publication of William Howell's two volumes of hiking diaries called "The Hudson Highlands" in 1933 and 1934, and reprinted by "Walking News" in 1982.
Edison Mine
In 1890 Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...
began to establish an iron
Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...
mine by acquiring nearly on the north slope of Dunderberg and the base of Bald Mountain. Two years earlier, the inventor had created a method for using electromagnet
An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an electric current. Electromagnets usually consist of wire wound into a coil. A current through the wire creates a magnetic field which is concentrated in the ...
s to separate and refine iron ore.
The remains of Edison's mine lie southeast of Doodletown Reservoir south of the abandoned "Old Turnpike," between the Cornell Mine Trail and the Doodletown Bridle Path. A tailings pile is on the hillside. The land was eventually acquired by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission
The Palisades Interstate Park Commission (PIPC) was formed in 1900 by Governors Theodore Roosevelt of New York and Foster Voorhees of New Jersey in response to the quarrying operations along the Palisades Cliffs of New Jersey. The Palisades, a Na ...
on December 31, 1938.
Other abandoned iron mines in the immediate vicinity predate Edison's project, and include those on Bald Mountain and West Mountain.
"Upper Level" 9W roadway construction
A so-called upper level section of U.S. Route 9W
U.S. Route 9W (US 9W) is a north–south U.S. Highway in the states of New Jersey and New York. It begins in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as Fletcher Avenue crosses the US 1–9, US 46, and the Interstate 95 (I-95) approache ...
blasted into the side of Dunderberg was opened to traffic in 1931. The lower section of highway had been constructed in 1911 as a roadway. The upper-level project was compared in the 1930s with Storm King Highway and the southeastern approach to Bear Mountain Bridge
The Bear Mountain Bridge, ceremonially named the Purple Heart Veterans Memorial Bridge, is a toll suspension bridge in New York State. It carries US 6 and US 202 across the Hudson River between Bear Mountain State Park in Orange Co ...
, two other mountainside highways along the Hudson built in the same era.
For the new highway averaged an elevation above the river of between 200 and . The project was undertaken because it reportedly required less excavation and backfilling than that required to widen the lower roadway to four lanes. Funds for the project had been allocated by the state in 1924. Over a period of years the road was temporarily blocked by landslides on a number of occasions.
With the opening of the upper level, the lower highway was to be widened to and carry only northbound traffic, while the upper level, also wide, would carry southbound traffic.
Today the lower roadway appears on maps as a minor secondary road labeled "Old Route 9W." More than a mile of this route is now called the Jones Point Greenway and is used solely for pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The upper roadway is three lanes and additional blasting has evidently been completed in recent years.
Cultural references
*In "The Storm-Ship", Washington Irving
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and " The Legen ...
portrayed the Dunderberg as home of a malevolent imp, calling up storms against unwary sailors on the Hudson River. "The captains of the river craft talk of a little bulbous-bottomed Dutch goblin, in trunk hose and sugar-loafed hat, with a speaking trumpet in his hand, which they say keeps about the Dunderberg."
*In the Irving story, skipper Ouselsticker, of Fishkill,—for all he had a parson on board,—was once beset by a heavy squall, and the goblin came out of the mist and sat astraddle of his bowsprit, seeming to guide his schooner straight toward the rocks. The dominie chanted the song of Saint Nicolaus, and the goblin, unable to endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy parson's singing, shot upward like a ball and rode off on the gale, carrying with him the nightcap of the parson's wife, which he hung on the weathercock of Esopus steeple, forty miles away.
Subsequent folklore apparently built on the Irving story suggests the goblin is imprisoned in Kingston's Old Dutch Church
*The New York-built, Civil War-era ironclad was named after this peak.
See also
* Buckberg, a hill in the Hudson Highlands that played a role in American Revolutionary War
*Popolopen
Popolopen is the name of several related landmarks mainly within the Hudson Highlands of Orange County, New York. These include a mountain, Popolopen Torne—or simply "The Torne", and a short and steep-sided nearby valley officially called H ...
, a name of several related landmarks in the Hudson Highlands
References
Further reading
* ''The War of the Revolution'', Ward, Christopher, 1952, Macmillan
External links
Joseph Brennan: Dunderberg Spiral Railway
{{Rail trails in New York
Mountains of Rockland County, New York
Bear Mountain State Park
Ramapos
Hudson Highlands
Mountains of New York (state)