Welcome to The Hudson Highlands Revisted, a blog in progress that will serve as a compliment to the book The Hudson Highlands William Thompson Howell Memorial. Please feel free to comment on posts.
Need a book to follow along?
The paperback book shown above is available at the Visitors Center Palisades Parkway, the Cornwall Library, Storm King Adventure Tours in Cornwall, and the Fort Montgomery Battle Site. You can also give us a call at 845-534-5667.
This is a reissue of the 1982 book issued by Walking News.
Enjoy! Rich Vacek
William Thompson Howell
William Thompson Howell was a amateur photojournalist and pathfinder. He was born in Newburgh, N.Y. in 1873 to Charles Howell and Mary Johnston . His father, Charles worked for the Wright Steam Engine Works in Newburgh. Ironically this company would submit a bid on the locomotive for the Dunderberg Spiral Railroad that Howell would later write about. Howell worked for the New York Telephone Company but also freelanced as photojournalist and wrote articles for The Sun, The Tribune, Country Life in America, as well as Outdoor Life. Howell appeared on the scene with his box camera and notebook to record the events of an era: The Mount Beacon Inclined Railway which opened in 1903, The construction of the Storm King Aqueduct in 1905, The Storm King Highway 1913. Locally he entered and commented on three local mines, The Forest of Dean Mine in Fort Montgomery, and the The Anthony’s Nose or Phillips Mine in Garrison, and the Smith Mine in the Cornwall Clove. His diary entries on the Fort Montgomery battlefield sight in 1910 have proved invaluable. Cornwall Philanthropist Dr. Edwin L.Partridge friended Howell and used his photographs in his quest to make the Hudson Highlands a national park. His contributions towards the conservation of the Highlands have been enormous. Throughout the text of The Hudson Highlands, Howell amuses the readers by inserting timely anecdotes, my favorite being “ A road can suddenly get tangled in the bushes, winds around a tree, runs up the bark and disappears in a knothole” Howell succumbed, like many in his time to tuberculosis in 1916. He left behind his diaries (1905-1911) and photographic scrapbook now located in the New York Public Library. We have reissued Howell’s memorial, the two volume set The Hudson Highlands . The book was published as a private publication for Frederick Delano Weekes, a relative of FDR. Volume one was published in 1933, and Volume two one year later in 1934. In was later republished in 1982 in paperback by the Walking Press. The book is in most university libraries across the nation as well as local libraries in the Hudson Valley.
