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"BREAKNECK"
"The "Yards" at Breakneck (Part 1 of 2)
As critically reliant was the United States' iron industry on timber as a fuel in sustaining its furnaces, so to it was with those plants manufacturing brick. Both enterprises devoured infinite tons of charcoal as their life perpetuating ingredient toward assuring uninterrupted firings of all furnaces and kilns of the early 1800s, through the Civil War.
Yet all dependency upon timber would eventually be alleviated, when shortly following the Civil War the iron foundries and brickyards would commence changing over from timber to coal as the new fuel in satisfying the gluttony of their blazing ovens. An obvious lethal blow had been dealt the timber cutting industry, considering the severity of lost revenue from foundries and brickyards alone. But the "fuel changeover" would, at least environmentally, allow vast acres of woodland regenerating themselves into stands of far greater longevity and number. Ironically, coal was fast becoming a champion of the earth, while at the same time depressing the future of a major industry whose existence relied solely on the earth.
A trilogy of brickyards had been drawn to the region of Breakneck from probably the late 1840s to very early 1900s. William Blake's 1849 History of Putnam County relates there having been but two such yards in Philipstown, both stationed in close proximity of Breakneck mountain itself. One yard was owned by a Clark (first name omitted), the other established by the estate of a David Fowler. Blake suggests the Fowler works being a short distance south of the Clark installation, both situated on, or very near, the shoreline, hovered over fiowningly by the ominous shadow of the "big mountain".
Timoney's, a third brickyard, had been raised about a mile south of a New York Central railroad depot (perhaps only a "flag down" stop) in Dutchess Junction, a minuscule hamlet approximately two miles north of the Breakneck community. Depending exactly where the D. J. station had stood, it could prove reasonably assurable in estimating Timoney's having been sited either just north of todays Breakneck 9D tunnel, or to its south, most certainly, in either case, along the Hudson shoreline. (Note: If Timoney's yard had indeed reposed in Philipstown, such may not have come into being until after Blake's verification of only two yards having resided in Philipstown.)
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