Garrison School Environmental Education
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  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • MISSION
    • COMMITTEE CHARGE
    • CREATING STEWARDS OF THE NATURAL WORLD
    • ESSENTIAL DEFINITIONS
    • NATURE'S BENEFITS FOR CHILDREN
  • PROGRAMS
    • FOREST FRIDAYS
    • HUDSON VALLEY SEED
    • NATIVE GARDEN
    • SCHOOL FOREST DAY
    • YOUTH CLIMATE SUMMIT
  • SCHOOL FOREST
    • HISTORY
    • VISITOR GUIDELINES
    • HHLT PROPOSAL
  • STUDENT RESOURCES
  • TEACHER RESOURCES
    • BOOKS & FIELD GUIDES
    • EXPLORE NATURAL SCIENCE >
      • ANIMALS
      • CITIZEN SCIENCE
      • CLIMATE CHANGE
      • GEOGRAPHY & MAPPING
      • GEOLOGY
      • INVASIVE SPECIES
      • MIGRATION
      • PLANTS
      • STREAMS, SWAMPS & VERNAL POOLS
      • TREES & FORESTS
      • WATER
      • WEATHER
    • GRANTS
    • HEALTH & SAFETY
    • HOW TO TEACH OUTDOORS
    • HUDSON HIGHLANDS TOPICS >
      • HUDSON HIGHLANDS FOLKLORE
      • HUDSON RIVER
      • LOCAL CONSERVATION HISTORY
      • REVOLUTIONARY WAR HISTORY
    • LESSON PLANS >
      • GRADES K-2
      • GRADES 3-5
      • GRADES 6-8
      • GRADES K-8
    • ORGANIZATIONS
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  Garrison School Environmental Education

HISTORY

OF THE GARRISON SCHOOL FOREST

native American history

3/24/2016

 
People first began to live in the Hudson Highlands and other areas of New York 12,000 years ago!
​
​In what's called the Clovis Culture period — around 10,500 BCE (before the common era) — Paleo-Indians lived in our area. Eugene Boesch details their history in Native Americans in Putnam County. Archeologists have discovered evidence that early Clovis people hunted mastodon in 9000 BCE in Hyde Park, New York, just north of Poughkeepsie, The closest surviving Paleo-Indian site near Putnam County is located at the Piping Rock site on the shoreline in Ossining. 

​THE LENAPEHOKING

The Native Americans we know most about are the Algonquin people, who knew themselves as Lenape or Lenni-Lenape. They began living in Manhattan in about 1,000 BCE (before the common era). Until the late 17th and early 18th centuries, their homeland was the drainage area of the Delaware River and all of its tributaries, along with the lower portion of the Hudson River. They called this place Lenapehoking (lu-nah-pay hoe-king), meaning “Lenape Country.” The Lenape spread in 200 miles in every direction, and came to live in the Hudson Highlands, in what is now Garrison.   By the 16th century, the Lenape were an alliance of three political groups that lived in different parts of the Delaware Valley. The Munsee lived in the lower Hudson River area, where Garrison is located, and in western Long Island. The Unami lived in the Philadelphia region. The Unalactigo (Nanticoke) lived in southern New Jersey. Each group spoke closely related dialects of the Algonquian language. 

The first known contact between New York Lenape and Europeans occurred on April 17, 1524, when explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano and his men arrived at what's now known as Staten Island. Unknowingly, Verrazzano and his crew brought diseases with them that the Lenape had never encountered -- and many Lenape died. The Lenape experienced at least 14 epidemics between 1633 and 1702, notes anthropologist and writer Robert Grumet. "Thus the Lenape people, who may have numbered 24,000 before the Europeans arrived, dwindled to probably fewer than 3,000 by the year 1700," Grumet writes

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the philipse patent

3/1/2016

 
The land that makes up the School Forest, like all of the property that surrounds it, was part of the Highland Patent, purchased by Adolphus Philipse from Dutch traders Lambert Dortlandt and Jan Sybrandt in 1697. Dortlandt and Sybrandt had purchased the land from Wappinger Native Americans. Originally, the deed set an eastern border of the land parcel three miles from the Hudson River. This included the site of the Garrison School and what is now Philipstown. But Philipse extended his land parcel all the way to what is now the Putnam County border with Connecticut. Later known as the Philipse Patent, the Highland Patent was a 250-square-mile parcel of land that became the Putnam County we know today. At the time of the American Revolution, Beverley Robinson owned the land. He had married Philipse's great niece Susannah, who inherited 60,000 acres of the Philipse lands. Robinson was a Loyalist who refused to make an oath of allegiance to the American cause in 1777. The Commissioners of Sequestration then confiscated the Robinson property and later sold it at auction. William Denning purchased a large piece of Robinson's former estate, known as Water Lot 1. He later sold a section to the Nelson family, 

19th century history

3/1/2016

 
In 1803, Cornelius Nelson sold 125 acres land, including the Garrison riverbank, to Harry Garrison as farm land. John Garrison, Harry's son, inherited the land. The Garrisons established the ferry to West Point in the early 1800s. Garrison Landing was named for John Garrison in 1847. John Garrison sold 82.9 acres to Samuel Sloan in 1863. The parcel of land included Fort Hill, the site of the South Redoubt.

Samuel Sloan was president of the Hudson River Railroad from 1855 to 1862. Later, he was president of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad company, as well as many other local New York State railroads. Sloan became interested in living in the Hudson Highlands for the sake of the health of his children. He built a large hillside villa in Garrison, called Oulagisket. He also bought more property and built houses for his adult children around the base of what became known as Sloan Mountain. Sloan had a road built to the South Redoubt, as well as an observation tower at the summit, between 1881 and 1882.
Picture
This 1891 Plan of Garrison Putnam County was published by Watson & Co. under the supervision of F.W. Beers. The map shows the families that owned the land where the Garrison School Forest is now located. The Desmond-Fish Library displays a copy of this map, which is also part of the New York Public Library's collection of open access maps. Click on the map to view a larger version.

revolutionary war history

3/1/2016

 
Picture
The 185-acre Garrison School Forest includes the summit and slopes of Fort Hill and steep ridges running east almost to Route 9. Fort Hill overlooks the Hudson River directly across from the United States Military Academy at West Point. It forms the center of the eastern rampart of the Hudson Highlands. Fort Hill received its name because a Revolutionary War fortification, the South Redoubt, is located on the summit. The South Redoubt and neighboring North Redoubt were part of Fortress West Point, a series of fortifications on the west and east banks of the Hudson River designed by military engineer Tadeusz Kościuszko. A redoubt is an earthwork built of earth, sod and timber. In Historic Structures Report on the Redoubts of West Point, Douglas R. Cubbison describes how the North and South Redoubt were designed and built. See the more extensive Revolutionary War History page within this site for more information.

how the garrison school received the gift of a forest

2/28/2016

 
PictureGen. Frederick H. Osborn
​The Garrison School received a gift of a 185-acre school forest thanks to the generosity of several Garrison residents. In the 1950s, Gen. Frederick H. Osborn visualized creating a school forest that could serve as an educational laboratory for Garrison School students.

"He was an amateur forester. He planted specimen trees at Cat Rock. He wanted the school to have access to Forestry training," said Gen. Osborn's grandson, Fred Osborn III, who lives in Garrison.

"His intention was to provide a resource for children of the community to be environmentalists, to learn about nature," Osborn said. "He felt the best way to do that was to give the school some land and have them use it."

Osborn explained that his grandfather met with the Sloan and Gunther families who owned some of the land that he envisioned as part of a school forest. "I think he mapped out what would be a useful plot. Some corners of it were owned by other families. He may have bought some pieces," Osborn said. "He was a very persuasive person. He made things happen."

Gen. Osborn and Samuel Sloan Duryee, the grandson of railroad executive Samuel Sloan, gave 135 acres of land, including the South Redoubt, to the Garrison Union Free School District in 1956. The two men also persuaded other family members and neighbors to contribute or sell to Gen. Osborn other pieces of land located in the mountainous area to the east of the South Redoubt. Between 1956 and 1961, Gen. Osborn acquired a total of 185 acres that he deeded to the Garrison School for use as an educational laboratory for children.

 
“He didn’t want it ever to be developed or sold,” Osborn explained.
 
The donors of the School Forest are: Samuel Sloan Duryee, Gen. Frederick Henry Osborn, Frederick H. Osborn Jr. and Anne Pell Osborn, William H. Osborn, Elizabeth D. Ballard, Alice O. and Newell Brown, Virginia O. and Morris Earle, and Herbert P. and Minette H. Gunther.

Fred Osborn III and his wife Anne Todd Osborn are deeply involved in environmental education and land conservation initiatives in the Hudson Highlands. Fred Osborn III is a Commissioner for the Taconic Region of New York State's Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. He also serves on the board of the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum, the Hudson Highlands Land Trust, and several nonprofit organizations. Anne Osborn, a Yale University-trained Forester, is the Board President of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. She is also a member of the Garrison School's Environmental Education Committee.

Photograph of Gen. Frederick H. Osborn. "Oral History Interview with Frederick Osborn." Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2016.

    school forest history

    Explore the history of the School Forest land, the Garrison area, and the Hudson Highlands.

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Garrison Union Free School, 1100 Route 9D, Garrison, NY 10524
Phone: 845-424-3689  |  Fax: 845-424-4733