Trapps Mountain Hamlet Historic District facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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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 in New York
Location in the United States
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| Location | Gardiner, NY |
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| Nearest city | Poughkeepsie |
| Area | 433 acres (175 ha) |
| Built | 1790–1940s |
| NRHP reference No. | 00001275 |
| Added to NRHP | November 2, 2000 |
The Trapps Mountain Hamlet Historic District is a special place located on the Shawangunk Ridge in Gardiner, New York. It covers a large area where a small community thrived for many years. People lived here from the late 1700s until the mid-1900s.
The people of Trapps mostly grew their own food to survive. This type of community, where people lived off the land, is rare in the eastern United States. They also worked in the forests, making things from wood. Later, many residents started working at big mountain hotels nearby. The last person living in the Trapps community passed away in 1956.
Today, most of the old buildings are gone, with only their stone foundations left. However, six buildings are still standing. These show a unique way of building that might have been influenced by the Native American tribes who lived in the area. Most of the land is now protected, either as part of the Mohonk Preserve or Minnewaska State Park Preserve. In 2000, the area became a historic district and was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
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Exploring the Trapps Landscape
The Trapps historic district covers about 433 acres. It is centered around the US 44/NY 55 highway and the Coxing Kill stream. This area is located on top of the Shawangunk Ridge in Gardiner, New York. Some parts of the district even stretch into the neighboring town of Rochester.
Most of this land is now covered in trees again. It is part of the Mohonk Preserve or Minnewaska State Park Preserve. You can explore the area using many hiking trails and unpaved carriage roads. These paths are accessible from the two nature preserves.
Mountains and Waterways
The closest large villages to the Trapps were New Paltz to the east and High Falls to the northeast. The mountains here were shaped by glaciers and by the Coxing Kill and Peters Kill streams. These streams provided water and power for the Trapps community. However, the streams also made the soil shallow and rocky, which limited how many people could live there.
The highest point in the district is about 1,100 feet above sea level. The lowest point is around 700 feet. To the east, you can see the Trapps and Near Trapps climbing cliffs. These cliffs face New Paltz and are managed by the Mohonk Preserve. The gap between these cliffs has been a pathway for travelers for hundreds of years, including the modern-day U.S. Route 44/55 highway.
A Look into Trapps History
Long ago, during colonial times, the northern Shawangunk Mountains were divided into two large land grants. These grants, from 1730 and 1770, opened the way for people to settle in the Trapps after the American Revolutionary War. The first settlers came from nearby valleys. Most were of Dutch descent, with a few English families.
Early Settlers and Industries
In the 1780s, a sawmill was mentioned in a will. This sawmill was later run by the Enderly family. For about 100 years, the Enderly family had a farm, a sawmill, and a blacksmith shop on the Coxing Kill stream. The Trapps community grew along this stream in the "Clove," which is a Dutch word for a valley.
The families in Trapps built their homes from logs, planks, and wood frames. A "plank house" was a unique type of building. It used thick, rough-cut boards nailed together vertically to form the walls. These houses did not have corner posts or studs. The planks and hand-cut beams made up the main structure. Because the hamlet was so isolated, people in Trapps continued to build log and plank houses even into the 1800s.
The thin, rocky soil made it hard to have large farms in the Trapps. Families usually grew only a few acres of corn, buckwheat, rye, oats, or potatoes. They might have a horse, a cow or two, some chickens, and a few pigs. To earn extra money, they sold butter, fruit, and eggs. Trapps men also made wooden hoops for barrels, peeled bark for leather tanneries, carved millstones from rock, and burned charcoal. The Van Leuven family was well-known for making charcoal.
Huckleberry picking was a very important way for the Trapps people to earn money from the 1800s to the mid-1900s. Entire families, from young children to grandparents, would pick berries from July to September. They would fill thousands of pails and buckets. Pickers often set the woods on fire to help the berries grow better. At least one Trapps family spent summers near Sam's Point, where seasonal berry camps became popular after 1900.
Growth and Decline of the Hamlet
By the 1840s, the Trapps community was big enough for its own one-room school, which opened in 1850. Seven years later, a new road called the New Paltz and Wawarsing Turnpike was built through the Trapps. Today's U.S. Route 44/55 follows much of this old road. Even though the turnpike didn't last long, it brought more traffic through the Trapps. The community grew to include a hotel, boarding houses, a store, and a chapel. The 1880s and 1890s were the busiest years for the hamlet, with about 40 to 50 families living there.
In 1859, the first mountain inn was opened at Mohonk Lake. In 1869, two Quaker brothers, Albert and Alfred Smiley, bought the property. They expanded the inn into a large hotel and started buying land to create a natural retreat for their guests. In 1879, Alfred Smiley opened his own hotels at Minnewaska Lake to the south.
These mountain hotels offered steady jobs for the people of Trapps. Many residents even sold their land to the Smiley families. Skilled workers were needed to build the hotels and the many trails and carriage roads for guests. The Trapps community provided these skilled workers.
After 1900, the hamlet started to decline. New technologies replaced the mountain industries. For example, steel hoops replaced wooden ones for barrels, and steel tools replaced millstones. Around 1907, the town of Gardiner stopped maintaining part of Van Leuven Road, a main route in the Trapps. Diseases like the Spanish Flu in 1918 also reduced the population.
The building of U.S. Route 44/55 in the late 1920s sped up the decline of the Trapps. The new, paved highway bypassed the center of the hamlet and cut some properties in half. Many remaining residents sold their homes and moved to nearby villages like Ellenville, Walden, and New Paltz. There, they found work and a better way of life.
Irving Van Leuven was the last Trapps resident to live the old way. He was born and raised in the Trapps and lived in a house without electricity or running water until he passed away in 1956. Irv was the last person in the Trapps to burn charcoal and make barrel hoops, skills he learned from his father and grandfather.
Another Van Leuven home was bought by Mohonk Mountain House in the 1920s. It later became part of the Mohonk Preserve. In the 1960s, members of the Appalachian Mountain Club leased this house, calling it the "Appy Cabin." They used it as a base for rock climbing. The Mohonk Preserve later restored the cabin, renamed it the Eli Van Leuven Cabin, and opened it as a historic building.
The Mohonk Preserve also helped get the Trapps mountain hamlet recognized as a historic district. Preserve staff have found about 65 historic sites in the district. These include cellar holes (old foundations), sawmills, bridge supports, stone walls, quarries, charcoal pits, and cemeteries.
The Smiley hotels at Minnewaska were bought by the Phillips family in 1955. They closed in the 1970s. Both hotels later burned down. A plan to redevelop the area led to a lot of opposition. As a result, New York State bought the property and made it Minnewaska State Park Preserve. This put that part of the Trapps mountain hamlet into public ownership.
Visiting the Trapps Mountain Hamlet Today
You can visit the Eli Van Leuven Cabin, which was built around 1889. It's the only original building of the Trapps hamlet still standing on Mohonk Preserve land. The Preserve has restored the cabin and sometimes offers guided tours. You can find tour announcements on the Preserve's website.
You can also walk the Trapps Mountain Hamlet Path to reach the Eli Van Leuven Cabin. This path follows the old Van Leuven Road. You can get to it from the Mohonk Preserve's West Trapps Trailhead on U.S. Route 44/55. A guide to the path is available at the trailhead or the Preserve's Visitor Center. Along the path, you can discover:
- An abandoned millstone quarry, where stonecutters once blasted out stone slabs to make millstones.
- An old bridge abutment, where a bridge once crossed the brook for people, horses, and wagons.
- An old stone fence or wall, which marked property lines. Ben Fowler, a Trapps resident, owned about 150 acres here. He used some for pasture and grew rye, oats, and buckwheat for his family.
- The Fowler burying ground, where Ben Fowler and his family, including young grandchildren, are buried. The oldest headstone is from 1866. The Eli Van Leuven Cabin is at the end of the path, past this burying ground.
You can also see the remains of the old Enderly sawmill and farm. This includes the Enderly family burying ground. To get there, drive west on U.S. Route 44/55 a short distance past the West Trapps Trailhead. Then, turn right onto Clove Road to reach the Preserve's Coxing Trailhead.
