An Unforgiving Land: Hardscrabble Life in the Trapps, a Vanished Shawangunk Mountain Hamlet

Robi Josephson; Bob Larsen

ISBN 10: 1883789737 / ISBN 13: 9781883789732

Published by Black Dome Press Corp., 2013

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 1.2. Seller Inventory # G1883789737I4N00

Synopsis:

Well-illustrated history of a small, hardscrabble community in the Shawangunk Mountains of New York s Ulster County where today s Mohonk Preserve and Minnewaska State Park Preserve now lie. From early post-Revolutionary days through World War II, a few hardy families scratched out a living atop the mountain, defying an unforgiving and isolated terrain. For generations they lived off the land, working subsistence farms and harvesting raw materials from the forest and earth, having only each other to rely upon. Today only a few vestiges of this proud and independent community remain. The rest has vanished along with the way of life that sustained it, but in the pages of this book Robi Josephson and Bob Larsen breathe life into this lost world and the people who once called it home. This long-awaited work tells the remarkable story of the Trapps people and how the hamlet was honored with placement on the National and State Registers of Historic Places the first time New York State has recognized the historic importance of a vanished, hardscrabble community.

About the Author: Robi Josephson is the author of Mohonk: Mountain House and Preserve (Arcadia Publishing, 2002). She earned her bachelor s and master s degrees in English from SUNY New Paltz, writing her master s thesis on John Burroughs in and around the Shawangunks. Before writing full-time, Robi worked as a freelance consultant in grant writing, publications editing, and collections cataloguing, the last two for the Mohonk Preserve. Bob Larsen is the author of Trapps Mountain Hamlet: An Interpretive Walk through a Vanished Shawangunk Community (Mohonk Preserve, 1999). Bob joined the Mohonk Preserve (then The Mohonk Trust) in 1974 as second ranger. He designed and installed many trails at the preserve. Bob also assisted the surveyor in locating and marking over fifty miles of boundary lines. In recent years he has added cultural historian to his title. Robi and Bob collaborated for ten years on this book, which is based on Bob s groundbreaking research of Trapps history over a period of forty years. Both live in Ulster County, New York.

Bibliographic Details

Title: An Unforgiving Land: Hardscrabble Life in ...
Publisher: Black Dome Press Corp.
Publication Date: 2013
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket