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Pawling Nature Reserve

Nature Conservancy preserves in New York (state)Nature reserves in New York (state)Pawling, New YorkProtected areas established in 1958Protected areas of Dutchess County, New York
Pawling Nature Preserve kiosk on AT
Pawling Nature Preserve kiosk on AT

The Pawling Nature Reserve is located in the northern section of the Town of Pawling, New York, United States. It is a 1,060-acre (430 ha) area located along the top of Hammersby Ridge, near Quaker Lake owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy. Acquired in 1958 from a local citizens' group, it is preserved to protect several diverse communities, including plant and animal species considered rare or threatened in New York, such as the devil's bit, soapwort gentian, maidenhair spleenwort and some salamander communities. It also helps protect the watershed of the Great Swamp to the east.More than 10 miles (16 km) of hiking trails cross the preserve, including a section of the Appalachian Trail, which provides access for hikers who take the Metro-North Harlem Line from New York City and get off at the nearby stop along NY 22/55. The preserve's main access is a large parking lot on Quaker Lake Road. In addition to the natural environments, the trails also offer scenic views of the Harlem Valley region.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Pawling Nature Reserve (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Pawling Nature Reserve
Quaker Lake Road,

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 41.602777777778 ° E -73.560277777778 °
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Address

Quaker Lake Road 91
12564
New York, United States
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Pawling Nature Preserve kiosk on AT
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Quaker Hill, New York

Quaker Hill is a hamlet in the town of Pawling in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The community shares its name with the twelve-mile-long ridge on which it is located; the ridge is located near the Connecticut state line. Quaker Hill is in the southern portion of the area known as the "Oblong" that was designated by the Treaty of Dover in 1731, and "known from pre-Revolutionary times as Quaker Hill". In colonial times, Quaker Hill separated "the English [settlers] of New England and the Hudson Valley Dutch population."It is the location of the Oblong Friends Meetinghouse, built in 1764. According to historian Richard Norton Smith, "the first antislavery protest meeting in North America convened" in 1767 in the Oblong Friends Meetinghouse. One addition to the Oblong Friends Meetinghouse, the Akin Free Library, is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.In 1926 the prominent radio broadcaster and reporter Lowell Thomas, who had made Lawrence of Arabia famous, purchased a 350-acre farm on Quaker Hill, which he later enlarged to 2,000 acres and named "Clover Brook Farm." Thomas developed Quaker Hill into a well-known haven for numerous successful business, news media, political, and legal figures. To keep the rural flavor of the area, Thomas forbade the building of shopping centers, large businesses or factories, or extensive housing developments on Quaker Hill while he lived there. Instead, individual lots and existing farms were sold to families who met with his approval. Approximately one hundred families settled there, usually under the guidance of Thomas and his real-estate agents. Among the prominent figures who lived on Quaker Hill at one time or another from the 1930s to the 1970s were New York Governor and two-time Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey, the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, famed CBS News journalist Edward R. Murrow, and Casey Hogate, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. In 1953, Thomas moved to a larger estate he built on Quaker Hill called Hammersley Hill.Thomas also transformed Quaker Hill while he was in residence there. He persuaded professional golfer Gene Sarazen and golf course architect Robert Trent Jones into building a country club and golf course on the northern part of the hill, and he built ski slopes and ski tows on the hill. Thomas held regular Saturday evening parties and dances for the residents of Quaker Hill at a community center he built called the Barn. In its fireplace, he "installed stones from the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the Parthenon, St. Peter's Cathedral, China's Great Wall, and Mount Vernon." He transformed a stone library on the hill, called Akin Hall, into a "nondenominational place of worship in Christopher Wren style." An avid horseman, he also established more than 200 miles of bridle paths that stretched across Quaker Hill.The community has been studied extensively. It was the subject of a Columbia University political science Ph.D. dissertation completed in 1907 by Warren Hugh Wilson, an early pioneering contributor to rural sociology.

Oblong Friends Meeting House
Oblong Friends Meeting House

The Oblong Friends Meeting House is a mid-18th century Friends Meeting House of the Religious Society of Friends in the hamlet of Quaker Hill, in the town of Pawling, Dutchess County, New York, United States listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1973. Members of the Religious Society of Friends settled on Quaker Hill in the 1730s and sought permission to establish a meeting and build a meeting house in 1740. The first meeting house was constructed across from the present building in 1742, but as membership grew, this building became too small and in 1763, the Yearly Meeting decided to erect "a framed house of timber, the dimensions to be 45 feet (14 m) long, 40 feet (12 m) wide and 15 feet (4.6 m) stud to admit of galleries." This new house was built in 1764 and is the structure that has remained on the site since. Benjamin Sherman, carpenter of Quaker Hill, is credited with building the new Hicksite Meeting House in 1764.In 1767, the question was raised in the meeting house whether it was "consistent with the Christian spirit to hold a person in slavery". After years of discussion, the question was answered in 1776 by the resolution that meetings were not to accept financial contributions or services from members owning slaves. During the American Revolutionary War a portion of the Continental Army camped in the nearby hills, both during the fall of 1778 and the winter of 1779. The meeting house was commandeered by General Washington's officers to be used as a military hospital.In 1828, the New York Meeting of the Society of Friends split into the Orthodox and Hicksite Societies of Friends. From then on, the Hicksites used the Meeting House, and the Orthodox Society, which had fewer members, built its own meeting house in 1831, just 200 feet (61 m) to the northwest. The latter building was later converted into a private residence. Membership in the area's Society of Friends declined in the course of the 19th century and the meetings were "laid down" in 1885. The property was acquired by the Historical Society of Quaker Hill and Pawling in 1936 which has preserved the building since then. The building is a two-story building, five bays wide and two bays deep. Inside the shingled structure, there are sliding panels which divide the men's and women's portions of the building. As with most meeting houses, there are two front doors, one for each gender.

Dover Drag Strip

Dover Drag Strip, opened in May 1961 and closed in 1976, and was a dragstrip for quarter-mile drag racing in Wingdale, New York. The track was touted as "the smoothest, most state-of-the-art facility" of its kind at the time. The track featured epoxy-based asphalt, 60 feet wide. It had its own "timing tower" that had the timing equipment, and served as the operations center, with operators calling the Elapsed Time [ET] and MPH of each pair of racers via intercom to the "times slip booth" at the other end of the track. This is also where the track announcer entertained and informed the spectators of the action. All this was considered "new technology" in 1961. By 1964, the flag starter was replaced with a homebuilt "Christmas Tree", with multiple colored lights, counting down each start. This was one of the first of its type in the entire nation.The track was founded and operated by Brookfield gas station owner Chet Anderson and his partner, Joe Archiere, of Germantown, Connecticut. It filled the regional gap left by the closing of the Car Club Racing at Montgomery, New York, airport. Dover preceded the other tracks to follow suit, famous in the area, namely Connecticut Dragway (now closed) and the still operational Lebanon Valley Track, near Albany. Racers from as far as Maine, Massachusetts and New Jersey would regularly frequent the strip.Dover was host to exhibition runs by the Legendary Don ‘Big Daddy” Garlits, California's “T.V Tommy Ivo”, the original Batmobile and Jet Cars. Average car entries of over 400 were common with upwards of 4,000 spectators on special events. There has been continued interest in this now defunct track, thanks to the ongoing Dover Drag Strip Nostalgia reunion every year.