Edward Payson Roe spent the final years of his life at his estate, Roelands, in the shadow of Storm King Mountain.

[2] Roe suffered a sudden heart attack after feeling extreme pain for hours.

At the time of his death, his publishers estimated that over 1,400,000 copies [4] of his novels had been sold in the United States and abroad.

On Memorial Day 1894, May 30th that year, a crowd of Edward's family, friends and fans gathered beneath a boulder in the woods behind his estate.

Dr. Teal of Elizabeth, New Jersey, a good friend of Roe who had begun his career as a Presbyterian minister in Cornwall, and William Hamilton Gibson, an illustrator and naturalist.

The beginning of Abbott's speech tells of Roe's skills as a writer: "It is of the latter aspect of his life I wish to speak for a few moments only, in an endeavor to interpret his service to the great American people by his pen through literature.

The park is situated on Boulevard, a somewhat preserved name for the road that traversed along the side of the original property.