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WHAT'S IN A NAME — Harriman State Park - 3 June, 2004
By LAURA LEVIN
SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: June 1, 2004)
E.H. Harriman, a savvy and steely businessman, wasn't one to flinch at a good challenge.
At the turn of the 20th century, he transformed the bankrupt Union Pacific Railroad into a money-making giant and came to dominate the railroad industry in the process.
When Harriman applied this same determination to stop a prison project from being built near his estate in Orange County, he left his mark yet again.
As a champion of the environment, Harriman decided to donate part of his estate to create a park that would be accessible to the public. In exchange, the state kept the prison out of his back yard.
Harriman State Park, which grew out of Harriman's donation, today includes more than 45,000 acres in Rockland and Orange counties. It is the second-largest state park in New York.
Edward Henry Harriman was born on Feb. 20, 1848, the fourth of Orlando and Cornelia Harriman's six children. According to a biography of Harriman by Maury Klein, "The Life and Legend of E.H. Harriman," Harriman's parents relied on relatives to get the family through tough financial times, and this left young Edward Henry determined to avoid such dependency. At age 14, he left school for Wall Street, where he took a job in a brokerage firm.
Harriman was a quick study.
In no time, he became a "pad shover," a worker who ran through the office with stock quotes and orders to buy or sell.
"He had nerve," Klein wrote, "knew how to hustle, was indefatigable, and had accumulated a useful store of knowledge and acquaintances during his days as a pad shover."
In 1870, at age 22, Harriman started his own brokerage firm and joined the New York Stock Exchange. After quick success, he began buying and selling railroads, and he found a huge challenge when he took over the bankrupt Union Pacific in 1898.
"In only a few years," Klein wrote in the biography, "Harriman rebuilt the line, reorganized its management, reacquired its lost subsidiaries, and turned it into one of the most profitable properties in the nation."
During the years when Harriman was gaining ground in business, the citizens of New York and New Jersey were losing ground to developers.
In "Palisades: 100,000 Acres in 100 Years," author Robert O. Binnewies described how first woodcutting, then quarrying, along the Palisades threatened the shoreline across from New York City. In response, environmental activists on both sides of the Hudson managed to create the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, which protected the Palisades and opened up the land to the public.
The commission extended its reach farther north when Charles Howard, the superintendent of New York state prisons in the early 1900s, proposed building a new prison at Bear Mountain. Howard's plan was to have inmates mine the mountain for stone and use it to build highways. According to Binnewies, when Howard built a temporary prison at Bear Mountain in 1908, "so many convicts escaped from the site that the residents of nearby hamlets were reported to be in a 'state of terror.' "
That's when E.H. Harriman stepped in.
As Binnewies wrote, although Harriman was battling cancer at the time, he told his wife, Mary, and then-Gov. Charles Hughes that he wanted to donate land and money for a public park provided the prison were moved elsewhere. Harriman died on Aug. 9, 1909, but his wife carried out his wishes. She secured a deal to have the prison moved in exchange for $1 million and 10,000 acres of the Harrimans' estate.
When the park was dedicated in 1910, the Harrimans' son, William Averell Harriman, who would later go on to become governor of New York, presented the deed and checks at the ceremony.
Susan Smith, the park historian for the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, said that even though Harriman's primary reason for donating his property was to relocate the prison, he and his wife had a record as committed environmentalists. They believed in the importance of preserving land, particularly for public use.
"I think they did see this as a major cause in their lives," Smith said.
After the dedication, it didn't take long for camps to be set up in the park, with various groups like the Boy Scouts coming in from the city to use them.
"They started coming immediately," Smith said, adding that with so many visitors, the commission soon funded an inn and dancing pavilions. "It became quite the place," she said.
More than 90 years later, Harriman State Park still hasn't lost its appeal.
According to Smith, the park, which grew to more than four times its original size, had 1.8 million visitors last year.
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A View for Generations
Palisades Interstate
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Bear Mountain
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