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🏘️ Croton Local History
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still there. A famous professor on first viewing the footprints advanced the theory that they were made by the ‘missing link’ before he shed his caudal appendage 3 , which trailed in the prehistoric clay behind him while he scanned the surrounding
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landscape for something good for breakfast. This accounted for the indentations and scored one for Darwinian theory. The devil legend seems to have hit the public fancy, though, for the big boulder at Hessian Hill is known as the Devil’s Rock, and
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Croton people point to the strange fact that nothing will grow in the unholy footprints, while the surface of the rock elsewhere is covered with gray-green lichens and thick moss. The Mohegans, who built their signal fires on the top of Hessian Hill
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before the first Dutch trader settled there to give rum and firearms for furs, regarded the giant boulder with deep veneration, and believed the footprints to have been made by the Great Spirit when He created the world.” 4 The view of the Hudson
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from the top of the hill. The New York Press says nothing about how and when the Devil’s Footprints were discovered in Croton, but they must have been known for some time. As far back as 1895 they were pointed out as a local landmark to a New-York
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Daily Tribune reporter writing an article about the area between Tarrytown and Peekskill. “At one of the highest points on the [Albany Post Road] . . . the guide shows one a place known as “Devil’s Track,” where the imprint of two human feet can be
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seen in the rock. ‘That’s where he stood when he jumped across the river,’ so goes the story, ‘and on the other side, near Haverstraw, you can see the footprints on the rock to correspond with these.’ As the river is about four miles wide here, no
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one argues the point when the native says: ‘It was a pretty good jump.’ ” 5 Footprints Everywhere It turns out the “Devil” has been jumping around the world for millions of years, leaving what are called petrosomatoglyphs , naturally-occurring
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representations of human or animal body parts incised in rock (though some petrosomatoglyphs are man-made). 6 As early as the 1830s, archaeologists searching for authentic dinosaur or bird footprints knew there were naturally-occurring examples,
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usually caused by the action of water. Here’s an 1836 account by an Amherst College professor of a visit to the “Devil’s Track” near the village of Wickford, Rhode Island: “Encouraged by . . . several very glowing descriptions that I had received of
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foot marks upon stone in Rhode Island, I was led . . . to perform a journey of two hundred and fifty miles for their examination. They occur about two miles north of the village of Wickford, on the road to Providence; and every person of whom I
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enquired, within twenty miles of the spot, seemed to be acquainted with the impressions there, under the name of ‘the Devil’s Track.’ But I saw no evidence of any agency there, except that of water. And it seemed to me that the only reason why every
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one does not impute the effects to water, is the difficulty of conceiving how a stream could have ever flowed in that spot for a long time, as it must have done, to produce the excavations . . .” 7 The Devil’s Footprint in a rock on the bank of the
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Green River Cove near Hendersonville, North Carolina. Croton isn’t the only place in Westchester with Devil’s Footprints. “Legends of Pelham,” a 1901 article from the New-York Daily Tribune says “When those who lived a hundred years or more ago found
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the prints of huge human feet on rocks at various places they decided that they had been left by the devil on his flight through the country. The first print was discovered in East Chester, and another, pointing in the same direction, was near Fort
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Schuyler. Across the Sound they found the third footprint in solid rock, and there the trail was lost. Long Islanders have said that if the devil could jump from East Chester across Pelham to Fort Schuyler, a distance of nine miles, he would not find
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it difficult to step across the island to the sea. . . .” 8 Croton’s Footprints Someplace at the bottom of Hessian Hill “lies a huge boulder shadowed by tall trees” with “a smooth surface,” bearing “the imprint of a pair of human feet placed side by
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side.” They aren’t the footprints of a leaping Devil, they’re a natural phenomena—but one so seemingly real that they became a local legend more than a century ago. Unfortunately, it appears that this particular legend wasn’t passed on from A. P.
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Gardiner’s era to today, so we’re left with a question that we hope some Crotonite can answer. . . . Where are the Devil’s Footprints? The New York Times article is available here . ↩ The Gettysburg Times , the Indiana Gazette and the Shawnee
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News-Herald are just a few of the papers that ran the story. ↩ A caudal appendage is a tail. See Wikipedia here . ↩ The Devil’s Footprint , The New York Press , September 1, 1912. ↩ See the end of the article “The Charms of Tarrytown” in the New-York
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Daily Tribune , August 5, 1895. Page 4. ↩ See Wikipedia . ↩ From the article “Description of the Foot marks of Birds . . . on new Red Sandstone in Massachusetts” by Professor Edward Hitchcock in The American Journal of Science and Arts . Volume XXIX.
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New Haven: J.D. & E.S. Dana, 1836. ↩ See the New-York Tribune , December 15, 1901. ↩ Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X (Opens
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in new window) X Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Cockcroft estate Gardiner estate Hessian Hill Published
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Click the image to enlarge it. Here’s a nice postcard of the view looking northwest over the rooftops of Ossining to Croton Point and Haverstraw. The card is postmarked from Ossining, January 18, 1905. This is what’s called an “undivided back”
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postcard, printed during the period when postal regulations prohibited any writing on the back except the address—hence the note to “Dear Peter” on the front. This card was published in Ossining by William Terhune—one of several local postcard
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publishers we can thank for preserving images of the area that might otherwise have been lost. Here are some other Terhune postcards: New Croton Dam, circa 1906 Double Arches Promenade View from Quaker Bridge Share this: Print (Opens in new window)
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Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on
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LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Post card Published November 20, 2013
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Ad from the Troy Daily Times , January 17, 1883. On January 17, 1883 the Troy Daily Times ran an ad for a lost watch that will quicken the heart of anyone fascinated by High Bridge, the covered wooden bridge that once soared above the Croton River.