🏘️ Croton Local History
Blog posts, articles, and community histories by local historians
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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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November 12, 2013 December 7, 2013
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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.
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LOST—A small sized hunting cased, gold English watch. On the upper case is an engraving of High Bridge, Croton river, N.Y. The owner prizes the watch as a family relic, and not for its intrinsic value. The finder will be handsomely rewarded by
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calling on JOHN E. THOMPSON, Jeweler, &c., Mechanicville, N.Y. Who would have commissioned an engraved watch depicting High Bridge? As much as we are interested in the bridge it wasn’t unique or famous in its day—certainly not like the other High
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Bridge, the one that carried the Croton Aqueduct over the Harlem River. Opened in June, 1842, our High Bridge lasted just 37 years—collapsing into the river from neglect in October, 1879. 1 Why was the watch a prized “family relic”? And why was the
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ad—which apparently ran in no other newspaper—published so far up the Hudson River in Troy, New York? Wooden Tubular Bridge Over Croton River , published by the London Stereoscopic Company. Courtesy of the New York Public Library. A tantalizing clue
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may be found in an article, “Croton Bridge Meeting,” published in the Sing Sing newspaper Hudson River Chronicle on October 26, 1841. Earlier that year what we now call the Old Croton Dam had collapsed, sending a deluge of water and debris down the
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Croton River Valley. When it roared through the gorge near Quaker Bridge the torrent was said to be 50 feet high and it destroyed all the bridges from Pines Bridge to the Hudson River. 2 By the end of the year the towns of Cortlandt, Newcastle and
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Mount Pleasant were making plans to build a new bridge on the lower Croton. The Chronicle reported that it would be built “upon the point . . . known as ‘the Deep Hole,’ ” which “from its height above the River” would be “the most secure from
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destruction by the risings of the River, or any outbreakings of the Dam above.” At a meeting on October 22, in the Ferry House at Van Cortlandt Manor, interested citizens and representatives of the three towns met to discuss plans to build the access
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roads on each side of the river and the bridge itself, “a Lattice Bridge (after the manner of the Harlem Rail Road Bridge).” The cost of this wooden bridge would be $16 per foot (not including a roof) and the contractor selected was “Mr. Joseph
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Haywood, Architect, of Troy .” A postcard of the Van Cortlandt Manor Ferry House, circa 1907. Before we speculate that the watch may have belonged to Haywood we need to correct some of the errors in the article to learn more about the man responsible
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for our beloved bridge. “Mr. Joseph Haywood” was actually “Mr. Joseph Hayward ” and he wasn’t really an architect, but more of a builder or construction supervisor. The “Lattice Bridge” he was proposing was not “after the manner of the Harlem Rail
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