Trapps Mountain Hamlet Historic District
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Trapps Mountain Hamlet Historic District
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Cellar hole of Davis House site, 2008
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| Location | Gardiner, NY |
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| Nearest city | Poughkeepsie |
| Coordinates | 41°44′0″N 74°12′51″W / 41.73333°N 74.21417°WCoordinates: 41°44′0″N 74°12′51″W / 41.73333°N 74.21417°W |
| Area | 433 acres (175 ha) |
| Built | 1790–1940s |
| NRHP Reference # | 00001275 |
| Added to NRHP | November 2, 2000 |
The Trapps Mountain Hamlet Historic District is located on the Shawangunk Ridge in Gardiner, New York, United States. It is a large area that covers the site of a settlement that thrived there from the late 18th to mid-20th centuries. Inhabitants practiced subsistence farming, making it one of the rare such communities in the East to have left any trace remaining. They supplemented that with a variety of other trades, primarily in the forest products industry, with most inhabitants gradually coming to work at nearby mountain resorts in the 20th century. The last resident died in 1956.
Only foundations remain for most of the buildings, and only six remain standing. Those that do show a unique structural system that suggests an influence of the Native American tribes that lived in the area at the time it was settled. Today most of them are on protected lands in the area, with a few privately owned. In 2000 the area was designated a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Trapps historic district contains about 433 acres centered along the US 44/NY 55 highway and the Coxing Kill atop the Shawangunk in the northwestern portion of Gardiner, with some portions overlapping into neighboring Rochester. Most of that area is now reforested, part of the Mohonk Preserve or Minnewaska State Park Preserve, or privately owned. A network of hiking trails and unpaved carriage roads can be accessed from the two nature preserves.
The nearest large villages to the Trapps were New Paltz to the east and High Falls to the northeast. The mountainous topography of the area has been sculpted in large part by glacial action and stream erosion by the Coxing Kill and Peters Kill, which provided water and water power for the Trapps people. Over time, however, these two natural forces resulted in shallow, rocky soil, which helped to limit the hamlet's population.
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