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Trapps Mountain Hamlet Historic District
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Cellar hole of Davis House site, 2008
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| Location: | Gardiner, NY |
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| Nearest city: | Poughkeepsie |
| Area: | 433 acres (175 ha)[2] |
| Built: | 1790–1940s |
| Governing body: | Mohonk Preserve, Palisades Interstate Park Commission, private residences |
| NRHP Reference#: | 00001275[1] |
| Added to NRHP: | November 2, 2000 |
The Trapps Mountain Hamlet Historic District is located on the Shawangunk Ridge in Gardiner, New York, United States. It is a large area that covers the site of a settlement that thrived there from the late 18th to mid-20th centuries. Inhabitants practiced subsistence farming, making it one of the rare such communities in the East to have left any trace remaining.[3] They supplemented that with a variety of other trades, primarily in the forest products industry, with most inhabitants gradually coming to work at nearby mountain resorts in the 20th century. The last resident died in 1956.
Only foundations remain for most of the buildings, and only six remain standing. Those that do show a unique structural system that suggests an influence of the Native American tribes that lived in the area at the time it was settled. Today most of them are on protected lands in the area, with a few privately owned. In 2000 the area was designated a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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The district is an irregularly shaped 433-acre (175 ha) area centered along the US 44/NY 55 highway and the Coxing Kill atop the ridge in the western corner of Gardiner, with some portions overlapping into neighboring Rochester. Most of that area is forested, part of either the Mohonk Preserve or Minnewaska State Park Preserve, with a few private residential inholdings. There are few cleared areas other than the unpaved parking lots for both preserves.[4]
Mohonk Mountain House is approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) to the northeast. The nearest large settlements are New Paltz to the east and Kerhonkson to the west. The district's topography is mostly determined by the Coxing Kill valley, its highest elevations roughly 1,100 feet (340 m) above sea level, falling to 700 feet (210 m) at its lowest points. To the southeast are the Trapps and Near Trapps climbing cliffs, with a gap between them providing access for the highway. Between the roads are portions of the two preserves' hiking trail networks, as well as some of the former roads now referred to as carriageways.[4]
Most of the district's area is the land between routes 44 and 55 on the southwest and Trapps and Clove Roads on the northwest. From there branches follow Clove Road northeast to the last contributing property in that direction just over the town line, northwest along 44/55 to the former sawmill site along Peters Kill, and southwest almost to the confluence of Coxing Kill and the Lake Minnewaska outlet brook. From the western extension another corridor includes most of dead-end Lyons Road near the Gardiner-Rochester town line. The Mohonk Preserve's Coxing Trail and Trapps Road carriageway provide the southeast boundary.[2]
Within this area are 65 total resources. All but 7 are considered contributing to the district's historic character. Most are sites, the remaining cellar holes or foundations of buildings within the former hamlet. Several bridges and cemeteries are included, and there are six buildings still standing, mostly frame houses with an unusual structural system.[5]
Archaeological digs nearby have demonstrated a human presence in the vicinity going back at least 8,200 years, possibly 11,500. The Esopus tribe of the Lenape were the dominant group in what is now Ulster County, using the Shawangunk ridgetop as a hunting ground and campsite. With the arrival of European colonists in the 17th century, they began living there more permanently as it was one of the few places not heavily settled. They were able to retain a distinct social and cultural identity through the 1870s.[6]
The land was first subdivided with the Groote Transport ("Great Transaction") Patent of 1730, which covered most of today's Town of Rochester. Later subdivisions affecting the future Trapps Hamlet included a 1764 grant to a man named Henry Harp, and the 1770 Nineteen Partners Tract. A map of the latter from 1799 shows the sawmill later associated with the Enderly family at the intersection of the Old Shawangunk Path, an Indian route through the area, and Coxing Kill. This is the earliest record of any of the district's extant remains. Two other buildings were also indicated below a nearby summit, but no trace of them has been found. The earliest known inhabitants were the van Leuven brothers, who were described as charcoal makers.[7]
Settlement continued along the creek. It is believed some of the early settlers were single European men who married and started families with local Esopus women. At first they built log homes, none of which remain except for the foundation of one house.[8] Most of the hamlet's surviving frame houses, as well as some other settlements on the ridge, are built in an unusual form called "Shawangunk batten-plank".[9] It consists of two layers of thin vertical battens over heavy horizontal planks, built in sections and connected to their neighbors with lap joints. There are no vertical members at the corners. This has no antecedent in any European building tradition and may well have come from the Lenape.[8] Circular burial stones in the district's cemeteries also suggest Lenape influence on the local lifestyle.[9]
The slopes, cliffs and thin, rocky soil prevented the establishment of large farms. Records suggest that for most farmers butter was the only product that was produced for sale. Residents supplemented their farm produce by harvesting timber from the surrounding forests for timber and charcoal. They also peeled the bark of the hemlock trees for the tannin used in tanning leather and made millstones from the rock. Later on, the manufacture of barrel hoops was introduced to the hamlet.[10]
By 1857 there were several small farmsteads along the Coxing. That year the Wawarsing and New Paltz Turnpike was built along the route presently followed by Clove and Trapps roads. It opened up the markets in the lower areas near the Hudson River to the Trapps produce, and the hamlet began to grow. Soon it had a hotel, store, and Methodist chapel. In 1887 the first written reference to the hamlet appeared noting these features.[11]
These would be the peak years of the hamlet's settlement. Huckleberry picking was introduced to the area, and the pickers frequently set the woods on fire to create conditions more favorable to the berry's growth, the effects of which can still be seen today. In the 1860s the Smiley brothers opened Mohonk Mountain House and buying up available land to provide a natural retreat for their guests. Another Smiley built a hotel at nearby Minnewaska Lake, now the site of the state park.
The resorts provided employment for the hamlet residents, even as many sold their land to them. The carriage roads provided new arteries of transport, but also required the demolition of some older homes. In 1897 a school was built, and three years later the settlement appeared on the first U.S. Geological Survey maps of the region, under the name Minnewaska. [9]
In the first decades of the 20th century the hamlet began to decline. Between the development of a process to synthesize tannin and the depletion of the hemlocks, the tanning industry had disappeared. The town vacated Van Leuven Road, the main local north-south route in the Trapps in 1907, no longer able to afford to maintain it.[12] The Spanish Flu of 1918 took its toll on the Trapps, killing many of its children.[13]
The realignment of routes 44 and 55 in 1929 to the current route accelerated this process. The highway now bypassed the center of the hamlet, hurting business there that depended on passing traffic. Many of the remaining residents sold out completely and moved.[14] The resorts bought their properties and allowed them to reforest.
In 1956 Irving van Leuven, the last resident, died.[12] Another van Leuven house, bought by the Mohonk Mountain House in the 1920s and leased for a time in the 1960s by members of the Appalachian Mountain Club as a base for their rock climbing sessions on the nearby cliffs. Today, restored and used as a museum, it is the only hamlet building still standing on Mohonk Preserve land.[13]
The Smiley hotels at Lake Minnewaska were closed in the 1970s. Both had burned down by 1986, and after a proposal by the Marriott Corporation to redevelop the area as a private resort led to widespread opposition the state arranged for the Palisades Interstate Park Commission to buy that property and manage it as Minnewaska State Park Preserve, putting that section of the hamlet in public ownership.
None of the contributing properties to the district are separately listed on the National Register. Several are notable enough within the context of the district, primarily those that still survive as structures.