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Philipstown Potpourri
"Breakneck" (Part 2 of 2)
For certain, quarrying on Breakneck mountain ceased during the 1850s. Unclear, however, is when such activity commenced. Past decades of consensus appear satisfied that between the middle 1820s and early '30s was when picks, shovels, drills and nitro glycerine were introduced to Breakneck mountain. Wm. Blake's 1849 History of Putnam County notes the "Highland Granite Co." and the "Blunt Quarry" being two of the more prominent enterprises located immediately on, or very near the scarred precipice. Highland Granite had, during its explosive reign at Breakneck, extracted from the begrudging mountain much of the granite used in constructing Sing Sing prison in Ossining, NY, between 1825-'30. And regional aqueduct activity would be supplied with rock for its culverts and bridges by Highland Granite. Granite for the Delaware Breakwater and for Fortress Monroe of Civil War notoriety were two of Blunt's more illustrious claims to fame in the archives of quarrying history.
Today's Breakneck mountain has proclaimed itself an anemic shadow of its original countenance. Thousands upon thousands of tons of shattered granite over 20 or more years had mercilessly and methodically bombarded and transfigured the anatomy of the goliathan crag. A present day beholder could not help but wonder what a massive behemoth Breakneck must have been prior to its brutally interrupted peaceful repose by man's own careless hand. That the mind's eye might attempt perceiving the magnitude of quarrying on Breakneck, a single detonated explosion in 1845 had ripped from the mountains' intestines 10,000 tons of massive chunks of finest grade granite. In one ear-splitting second the furrowed cliff suffered what was probably its most infamous indignity!
Breakneck mountain's celebrity came not as an eternal repository of granite, but from a profane prostitution against its stirringly rugged self. Such gross disfigurement, over a period of at least two decades, would eventually culminate in arousing and stimulating a heretofore dormant consciousness toward halting the blatant destruction of physically endowed sites of inestimable grandeur throughout the Hudson River Valley region.
The majestic mountain's everlasting contribution to history would be that the agony of violation against its magnificence would assist dramatically in igniting public outrage toward the unchecked ravages of man on nature. Preservation and conservation of beauteous regions in the hallowed valley would prove arduous, painful, belligerent, costly, political and maddeningly time consuming. Through several years the furious altercations between the "caring" and the "uncaring" would persist; not alone against man and his thoughtlessness, but against that thinking which would permit disrespect and dishonor to the sanctity of Mother Earth. The zealous dispute rages on!
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