If you are hiking The Hook this weekend, NorthJersey.com suggests you stop and see the history, too. The website of The (Bergen) Record newspaper offers this step-by-step, play-by-play account of a forgotten quarry and an old cemetery you’ll find near the Knickerbocker Fire Station at Rockland Lake.
“Beyond the cemetery, the climb steepens. As the grade moderates and the trail bends to the left, there is an unobstructed viewpoint over the Hudson River to the right of the trail… You’ll come to another unobstructed viewpoint over the river. Croton Point Park juts out into the river to the left, and the Village of Ossining is to the right.
Directly below you is the site of a former quarry. Although the quarrying operations ended about 100 years ago, the scars carved into the hillside are a permanent reminder of these quarrying operations. Down below, along the river, you can see the Hook Mountain Bike Path, which will be your return route. The drop to river level is quite steep, so caution should be exercised when approaching the edge.
At the base of the descent, you’ll notice an overgrown area surrounded by a chain-link fence to the right. The trail now resumes its ascent, soon beginning to parallel a stone wall to the left. At the end of the stone wall, where the trail bears left and continues to ascend, a vague, unmarked path leads ahead to another viewpoint over the river from the top of another abandoned quarry.”
There are driving directions and more information on hiking and biking Nyack Beach State Park and Rockland Lake at NorthJersey.com.
See also: Hook Mountain Centennial, 4/18/2011
