I checked the State Historic Marker inventory for 1950 and did not find anything listed on this subject. Funding for the State Markers ran out in 1939, so it is possible the marker seen there "30 years ago" was privately funded.

Philip Lord, Jr.
Director, Division of Museum Services
New York State Museum
Albany, NY
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/services.html

>>> [log in to unmask] 04/30/96 03:46PM >>>
If you are talking about Round Top Mt in the Catskills, about 30 years ago
there was one of the state blue and gold historical signs on the main road.
A lot of those signs have disappeared, so it may be gone by now.

Eleanor Preston, Tully Area Historical Society.

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Allen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2001 10:57 AM
Subject: Alleged "Stronghold" on Roundtop Mountain


>      Several months ago I received an inquiry from someone asking if I had
> any maps showing an alleged British fort on Roundtop Mountain.  I couldn't
> find any evidence of such a fort, and was inclined to dismiss the idea as
> improbable.  In the most recent issue of the NYS Conservationist, Edward
> Henry in an article on "The Mountain Island" provides a succinct summary
of
> what must be a fairly widespread story.  I still find it hard to imagine
> the British or anyone else building a fort on top of an isolated mountain
> during the Revolutionary War, and suspect that the story is one of those
> myths that became installed in our local histories during the nineteenth
> century.  Does anyone on the list know anything for certain about this
> alleged stronghold--either contemporary evidence confirming its existence,
> or an indication of how the story got into circulation?
>
> Here is Henry's version of the story:
>
>      "During the Revolutionary war, the British and their Iroquois allies
> used the mountain as a lookout to spy upon the movements of the rebelling
> colonists in the Hudson Valley.  Prisoners being moved west to British
> strongholds were often moved through the Catskills, which were mostly
> populated by loyalists, and the British built a small fort between
> Kaaterskill High Peak and Roundtop.  Many captured rebels were held
> overnight at the mountain outpost.  Small sections of the stronghold's
> foundation remain visible even today."
>