This land was inhabited by the Esopus People for hunting and growing crops before Europeans took it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and continued to cultivate it for wheat, orchards, and pastureland. The Hasbrouck family farmhouse and surrounding property were later used as Revolutionary War headquarters. The property became a State historic site in 1850, and later in the nineteenth century it included a Victorian strolling park with curving paths for visitors. Cannons, benches, and paths were added to transform the old farm into a public park, and as the setting for important events in the nation’s founding, the property came to be used as a unifying symbol and the site of patriotic celebrations. As humans live within the landscape and shape it to their purposes, the land itself becomes an artifact.
