I know this tract very well. I grew up about a half hour away and hiked, fished and hunted Ramapo Mt. State Forest many times. There are two separate parking lots on Skyline Drive used to access the tract. A blazed hiking trail leads to the lake from the southern lot, and a deteriorating paved road leads to it from the northern lot. The paved road is chained and the only vehicles allowed to use it are park staff and the few private residents still living on the lake. While in high school, I wanted to more thoroughly explore the fishing opportunities on the lake and got the bright idea to lash my canoe to my skateboard and push it down that paved road. It still hurts to recall that journey! The ruins are of a house built just after 1900, and referred to as the Van Slyke Castle. I don’t recall the exact chain of ownership but don’t remember it as anything particularly exciting. The ruins are certainly interesting though and it’s beautiful country to hike around, with a few scenic overlooks that can’t be matched in this part of the state.
As to the unfriendly people in the area, I never found this to be the case. Just like the “pineys” of the pine barrens, people in remote areas have all sorts of stories snowball about them. The largest group up there suffering from such stereotyping used to be called the Jackson Whites, with several different stories being told of how their name came to be. The current politically correct name for the group is the Ramapo Mountain People. They come from a mixed background made up of mostly African, Dutch and Native American ancestry. They compromised a large part of the labor force during the peak of the region’s iron mining.
