The rolling hills and fertile soil in the Ramapo Valley provided a quiet, unassuming way of life for the early pioneering families.

New Yorkers, in search of a cool, quiet retreat to relieve the stress of their urban lifestyles, filled the passenger trains bound in summer for the surrounding rural regions.

Suffern played host to the traveling public, whether accepting the hospitality offered by the resort hotels and boarding houses or just switching trains.

The list of guests, visitors, and part-time residents who were attracted to Suffern's rural charm included the names of many families from New York's affluent "upper crust".

Picturesque rolling hills and vast wooded lands guarded by the Ramapo Mountains provided a rustic setting for the development of elegant country estates.

The new summer home contained such amenities as a two-lane bowling alley, an electric elevator, a private chapel, greenhouse, 13 fireplaces, and in all, over 44 rooms.

The estate comprises 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) and has a working farm, not including the 5 smaller "mansions" the Ryans built for their sons in the area, some of which are still standing today.

After leaving his native state in 1868, he traveled to Baltimore, Maryland, and found a job in the dry goods business of John S. Barry, a highly successful entrepreneur.

From there Ryan amassed millions in urban transit, railroads, tobacco, insurance, banking, rubber, diamonds, and even the Thompson submachine gun.

However, his plans to develop the property, including possibly as a country club, never materialized, and the vacant mansion fell victim to vandals.

"Turning off the Haverstraw Rd, almost opposite the house of Senator Royal S. Copeland, into a dirt avenue, one is faced by a waste-land of scrub oak and sassafras with a lonely shack near the entrance."

Borsodi, a wiry, shock-haired little man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and paid "little attention to his clothes", began his new style of country living, later labeled as "agrarianism for commuters", in 1919.

In 1935, Borsodi launched Bayard Lane, a small experimental cooperative community on a rolling unimproved tract of 40 acres (160,000 m2) at the foot of the Ramapo Mountains.

The other members were Samuel D. Dodge, Clarence E. Pickett, Dr. Harold Rugg, Beveridge C. Dunlop, W. Van Alan Clark, Mrs. Elizabeth Macdonald, Mrs. William Sargent Ladd and Dr. Warren Wilson.

Fourteen families who knew Borsodi or who had heard of his project were willing to try the experiment after those interested in the idea had been "philosophically initiated the previous January", The New York Times reported.

The school taught the essentials of do-it-yourself agrarianism, including caning, poultry raising, animal husbandry, masonry, carpentry, and use of tools and household equipment.

A new wave of patriotism swept the country, leading Bayard Lane residents to distance themselves from Borsodi's self-sufficient principles and cooperative living.

[8] In 1992, two historical markers were erected along U.S. Route 202 to recount the legacy left by the nearly forgotten experimental community whose new style of country living received national attention in the 1930s, and gave hope and inspiration to struggling families of the Depression.

In 1907, Meyer carefully chose 200 acres (0.81 km2) from the abundant, rural Ramapo landscape, for the creation of an elegant county estate and working farm.

Among the rolling hills, century-old trees, and beautiful mountain vistas, he carved "one of the model showplaces in Rockland County", as reported by The New York Times.

Additional outbuildings were constructed to form an attractive ensemble of farm buildings, including a massive timberframe dairy barn with caretaker's cottage.

He later founded White Laboratories in Newark, New Jersey, which manufactured many nationally known drug products such as Feenamint, Aspergum and a number of cod liver oil concentrates.

Ardent supporters of the society, the Meyers donated thousands of dollars annually and worked actively for the organization, including erecting a branch shelter at their farm to care for homeless animals.

Indian Rock is a large glacial erratic boulder of granite gneiss, formed in the Proterozoic (Precambrian) era, 1.2 billion to 800 million years ago.

The source area for the boulder was nearby in the Ramapo Mountains-Hudson Highlands; it is difficult to know for certain exactly where it was picked up by the glacier, but most likely not more than 5 to 10 kilometers from its current location.

The boulder rests upon glacial outwash which in turn lies atop Triassic sedimentary red beds (sandstone and shale) of the Newark Basin (circa 145 million years old).

The rock was carried to its current location by the internal flow of the continental ice sheet during the last glacial maximum, circa 21,000 years ago.

The base of the continental glacier scoured the bedrock terrain across which it moved, thus plucking large and small blocks of rock from their position in the Ramapo Mountains and Hudson Highlands.

Glacial polish, striations and grooves commonly found on erratics of this size have for the most part been effaced by the normal process of decomposition called weathering.

This power extends to setting tax rates and fee schedules that generate revenue for the village as well as authorizing expenditures for all municipal purposes.