Are there any caves on Mount Beacon?

answered 2013-01-09 16:58:29 -0500

Ben Royce
45 ● 1 ● 2 ● 8

updated 2013-01-09 17:01:57 -0500

I found a reference to caves and, "buried treasure" at a different location (hat factory: old buttons)

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/revolutionary-war/319514-mount-beacon-ny-revoloutionary-war-cave.html

North and South Mount Beacon rise to 1,531 and 1,635 feet elevation. It is the highest point between the Catskills and the Atlantic Ocean. The Indians used the mountain as a signal site. North Beacon was chosen by George Washington during the American Revolution to have a rectangular pyramid thirty feet high built of logs filled with brush wood for signaling militia that the British were approaching. The signal system ran from Philadelphia to Albany and Boston. According to local legend there is a cave. It is located on the mountain somewhere. It was told to me by a local that it is at the top of a mule shoot? Im guessing that is a trench that runs down the mountain. We looked on and off for two years but never located it. Its a very large mountain and lots of area to cover. If your not careful youll find yourself on another mountain before you know it. Alledgedly in the cave is barrels left there in war time. The barrels contain battle residue. As we never found it while I lived there I can neither confirm or deny its existance. I will say if you go looking for it be prepared its a long way up. On a side note there is the remnants of an old resort on the top of the mountain as well. Good place for hunting. The Otis Elevator Company erected the steepest incline railroad, 2,364 feet high with an average grade of 64% on May 30, 1902. The incline stopped operations in 1976. Atop the summit are the remains of the incline railway’s wheelhouse, including impressive remnants of the original machinery. Passing the foundations of the Beaconcrest Hotel and Casino (in reality a dance hall).

If your into Civil war there is the swift streams running into the Hudson River. It furnished water power for milling and textile factories.The Tioronda Hat Works on the Fishikill Creek in Beacon has been undergoing demolition since September 2011 (or earlier). Begun in 1879, the mill, like many in the area, expanded with new construction in the following decades. The last mill to occupy the brick buildings was the Merrimac Hat Company. In 1949, Merrimac sold the property to Beacon Terminals Corporation, which used the buildings for warehousing. In 1997, real estate developer William S. Ehrlich formed a different company under the name of Beacon Terminal Associates and acquired the former Tioronda Mill and about 20 other properties in Beacon, NY, many of which have remained vacant.At one time, Beacon was second only to Danbury, Connecticut in the manufacture of hats. Now the exciting part. The buttons for the hats were dumped. A huge cache can be found behind the building. On a strip of land that is between the back of the factory and the Fishkill River. I know they are there because I found them in 2007. Someone more familiar with Civil War buttons may find this a treasure trove. Good Luck

and I remember something from reading the old Beacon Dispatch, an interview with a mountain man... ah yes, here we are, lots of good mount beacon lore in general in the rest of the article:

http://beacon.blogs.com/beacondispatch/2004/10/beaconvoices_b.html

But there are very few descendants of the mountaineers left. You know the guy who runs the hot dog stand outside the post office? He’s from a mountaineer family called the Baxters. And the Storms live at the end of Mountain Lane. They’ve been in this area longer than my family.

If you walk up and sit on Bald Hill, and you look at the city, you can almost visualize it without the houses, how it used to be. You can feel the difference in temperature – there’s a frost line in the mountain where it’s 10 degrees colder. It hits you like you’re walking into a wall. If you know where to look, you can still see the outlines of the foundations of the farms that were up there, the stone walls, and where the wells were. And there was also iron ore mining up there too.

You also have a cave up there, which few people know exists. When the Revolutionary War ended they didn’t carry all that stuff down. Most of it’s still in the cave: weapons, ammunition, you name it. Maybe it’s caved in a little bit. You have to know where to look. The night the casino burnt down, my mother and father spent the night in the cave. My mother told me never to go there. There’s nothing but snakes and death in there, she said.

Q: You know where it is?

A: Yeah, I know where it is. When you were a kid here, you got your junior hunting license, and climbed up Mt Beacon to learn how to live off the land: how to build a fire, catch your own food. You got to know the mountain really well. Your father taught you that kind of stuff. But you can’t do that any more.

Q: Would you tell me how to find it?

A: [chuckles] You’ll have to live a few more years in this town before you get to know that.