Wiccopee Trail

Woods/farm road trail

This trail is very close to our house and connects into the Fahnestock trail system. It’s possible to walk to it, but you’d have to get across the Taconic Parkway. It’s doable, particularly during those times when the Taconic is not very busy. Today we went around rush hour so there was no way I was going to attempt it. So we drove across to the other side and parked by the side of the road.

It’s a fairly typical Fahnestock trail: large rocks, stone walls, the occasional downed tree etc. There’s also one very short, swampy bit where I had to pick up Jackson and carry him across. He’d just had a bath and Eirah would have killed me if he got muddy. However, where most of the Fahnestock trails I’ve been to have been narrow, with undergrowth coming right up to the trail itself this one is wider. More along the lines of a woods/farm road than a hiking trail. The prevalence of ruined stone walls along the trail would seem to confirm that this is what it once was.

It would be a pleasant trail if it didn’t run alongside the Taconic for a while so, in this stretch, there’s the constant noise of traffic. After about 45 minutes it starts to turn away from the parkway offering the prospect of a quieter walk. I’d already been for a walk in the morning and it was a hot, humid day so I didn’t feel like going any farther. We turned around and made our way back.

Marshy bit.

Boulders.

Rock wall.

Tree down across the trail.

Remains of the Tioronda Hat Factory

Beacon was apparently once known as the hat capital of the United States. These are the ruins of one of the factories that made the hats. Demolition was supposed to have started in 2012, but if that’s the case it doesn’t seem to have progressed very far.

According to Tom Rinaldi and Rob Yasinsac’s Hudson Valley Ruins site:

The Tioronda Hat Works on the Fishikill Creek in Beacon has been undergoing demolition since September 2011 (or earlier). Begun in 1879, the mill, like many in the area, expanded with new construction in the following decades. The last mill to occupy the brick buildings was the Merrimac Hat Company. In 1949, Merrimac sold the property to Beacon Terminals Corporation, which used the buildings for warehousing. In 1997, real estate developer William S. Ehrlich formed a different company under the name of Beacon Terminal Associates and acquired the former Tioronda Mill and about 20 other properties in Beacon, NY, many of which have remained vacant.

The Tioronda Working Group says that Tioronda means “place of the council fire where the two rivers meet”

Mount Gulian

I was looking for somewhere to walk the dog in Beacon, NY and missed my turning. As I was trying to find it I saw a sign to Mount Gulian, which I’d vaguely heard of, and decided to see what it was. You go through a housing development and then suddenly there’s this house overlooking the Hudson.

According to Wikipedia:

Mount Gulian is a reconstructed 18th century Dutch manor house on the Hudson River in the town of Fishkill…The original house served as the headquarters of Major General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben during the American Revolutionary War…

The original mansion was destroyed in a fire laid by an arsonist in 1931. After this, the ruin of the house was left unattended until 1966, when Bache Bleecker, a descendant of the Verplanck family, and his wife Connie founded the Mount Gulian Society, as a nonprofit, private organization. The goal of the society was restoration of Mount Gulian which was completed in 1975. The restoration reconstructed the house to the state it was in when it served as von Steuben’s headquarters. Later additions were left out. Since then, the building has been accessible to the public as a museum. Also on the site is an 18th-century Dutch barn, which was moved to this location from Hopewell Junction.

Assuming the part facing the Hudson is the front of the house, this is the rear porch.

Front of the house overlooking the Hudson.

View of Hudson from the front porch.

View of the house from the Garden