Checking in
- Thread starter MarkBNJ
- Start date
Ben, glad you finally made it up here. That's damn sad about the Van Campen place. I wasn't aware it had burned. The are still many abandoned structures up there, but I guess over time they will all come to look more like what is in the Pines now: foundations and bricks. I just wish the NPS was able to preserve the most historic and notable, at least. But I know they don't have the resources and I don't know how you integrate preservation of so many sites into the management strategy for such a large park. Millbrook is sort of the "official monument" to what used to be there, and it doesn't seem like they know what to do with other sites like the Shoemaker farm off of Mountain Road, or the Van Campen "Inn" that you snapped a pic of. There are probably six or seven other structures, including a couple down near Columbia, that deserve preservation. I doubt it will happen, though. Same story on the Pennsylvania side.
Well, the Van Campen Inn didn't burn. It was the Van Campen farmhouse in Calno that got torched.
Yeah I know exactly the one you're talking about, though I haven't been back up to look yet. It's right next to the old Van Campen cemetery that I bushwhacked into a few years back. Shame about that house.