Doodletown, New York

In the 1890s, Thomas Edison bought a defunct iron mine in Doodletown to test his proposed technique for an improved method of refining ore.

By the 1920s, the height of population for Doodletown, the settlement had a school, a church, several small businesses, two cemeteries and approximately 70 homes.

Around this era, military and tourism-related enterprises on nearby Iona Island employed residents, as did the Palisades Interstate Park Commission.

[5] Bear Mountain began to be developed as a park in the early 20th century,[2] and began to expand around 1920, in part by purchasing property from the landowners in Doodletown, as did the separate but contiguous Harriman State Park, where a story that is analogous but less widely noted than Doodletown, concerns the nearby hamlet of Jones Point.

Those who refused to sell lost their land through eminent domain by 1965,[1] and most of the remaining structures were demolished or disassembled and moved out by the late 1960s.

Steel signage has recently been installed by the park service, listing which families owned each property and often showing photographs of former buildings.

Doodletown may also be approached from the south end of the parking lot at Bear Mountain Inn via an underpass beneath Seven Lakes Drive.

One may also enter the area from the Long Mountain Parkway side, which is a more direct route to the 1777 West Trail or the Bridle Path.