The story
Doodletown sat in a hollow on the west bank of the Hudson, in the shadow of Bear Mountain — a settlement of loggers, miners, and farmers first worked by a Huguenot family whose name was anglicized to June and who arrived before the Revolution. British troops marched through it in October 1777 on their way to storm Forts Clinton and Montgomery. By the 1920s about 350 people lived here across some 70 homes, with a school, a church, two cemeteries, and jobs at the Iona Island resort next door.
The town's end was bureaucratic. In 1964 the Palisades Interstate Park Commission offered residents a choice between a buyout and condemnation, clearing the hollow for a ski development that was never built. The last families — the Junes among them — left in 1965, and the land was folded into Bear Mountain State Park.
What remains is a web of shaded trails over the old street grid: cellar holes, stone steps, lilacs gone wild, and two well-kept cemeteries whose descendants still hold burial rights. The name's origin is disputed — theories run from 'Yankee Doodle' to a Dutch phrase for the hollow — and nobody has settled it.
What remains today
Cellar holes and stone foundations along the old roads, stone steps and retaining walls, and two maintained cemeteries — all on marked hiking trails.
From the archives
Doodletown turns up on 65 digitized newspaper pages from New York — read them free in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America collection.
Source: Library of Congress digital collections.
Questions from the field
- Why was Doodletown abandoned?
- The state bought out or condemned the hamlet in 1964–65 for a ski resort that was never built; the land became part of Bear Mountain State Park, and no one has lived there since 1965.
- Can you visit Doodletown?
- Yes — it's open, free parkland laced with hiking trails. The cellar holes and cemeteries are easy to reach on foot, but nothing may be removed from the site.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Doodletown — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Doodletown's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 948574
- — Palisades Interstate Park Commission — Doodletown
- — Town of Stony Point / Rockland County histories