History
Anne Hutchinson's short-lived dissident colony, along with a number of other unsuccessful settlements, was located in what is now the park's land. The colony, though English, was under Dutch authority; it was destroyed in 1643 by a Siwanoy attack in reprisal for the unrelated massacres carried out under Willem Kieft's direction of the Dutch West India Company's New Amsterdam colony. In 1654 an Englishman named Thomas Pell purchased 50,000 acres (200 km²) from the Siwanoy, land which would become known as Pelham Manor after Charles II's 1666 charter.
During the American Revolutionary War, the land was a buffer between British-held New York City and rebel-held Westchester. As such it was the site of the Battle of Pell's Point, where Massachusetts militia hiding behind stone walls (still visible at one of the park's golf courses) stopped a British advance.
The park was created in 1888, under the auspices of the Bronx Parks Department, and passed to New York City when the part of the Bronx east of the Bronx River was annexed to the city in 1895. Orchard Beach, one of the city's most popular, was created through the efforts of Robert Moses in the 1930s.
In 1941, the New York Police Department used land from the park to create the Rodman's Neck Firing Range.
Read more about this topic: Pelham Bay Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)