Some 20,000 years ago, New York lay beneath massive glaciers. When the ice receded, it left the distinct landscape of Van Cortlandt Park—steep ridges, smooth hillsides, and open flats—and exposed three major rock types: Fordham Gneiss, Inwood Dolomite, and Manhattan Schist. About 7,000 years later, ancient Native Americans arrived in this area, following mastodon, giant beaver, and caribou across North America. By the year 1000, the Lenape, Eastern Woodland Indians, had begun permanent settlements from lower New York State through Delaware, and the Weckquaesgeek Lenape occupied this site when the Dutch East India Company brought the first Europeans to settle in the Bronx in 1639. In 1646, Adriaen Van Der Donck became the first individual to own land in what is now Van Cortlandt Park, and his estate, de Jonkeerslandt, gave Yonkers its name. The estate passed through several generations that transformed the land into a working plantation, and during the 1690s a 16-acre lake was created by damming Tibbetts Brook to power a gristmill. On Dec. 12, 1888, the City of New York took title to 4,000 acres of Bronx parkland through the efforts of the New York Parks Association, an acquisition that led to the formation of Bronx, Claremont, Crotona, St. Mary's, Van Cortlandt, and Pelham Bay Parks, as well as Crotona, Mosholu, and Bronx-Pelham Parkways. The first public municipal golf course in the country opened here in 1895, the Van Cortlandt Mansion opened as a museum in 1897, the Parade Ground was created in 1901 and used by the National Guard for training until the end of World War I, and in 1906 a cairn was dedicated to Chief Daniel Nimham, Captain Abraham Nimham, and as many as 14 other Stockbridge Indians slain here during the Revolutionary War. In 1913, the park was named for the Van Cortlandts, whose association with the land began in 1694 when Jacobus Van Cortlandt bought the property; the family mansion was built in 1748 by Frederick Van Cortlandt, whose family remained here until the 1880s, and on Vault Hill Augustus Van Cortlandt hid city records from the British Army at the start of the American Revolution.
