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[TRANSCRIPT]

Hardwood has been around for a very long time. Yet the students of today know little about the history of the school. For example, there are many trails scattered throughout the outside of the school that can be used for everyday uses. But yet again, very, very little is known about where they came from. How did they get there? Were these travel results of a generous gift from an outsider, or where they were just a result of nature? So we set out to get answers. You’re listening to hidden hardwood informative show that gives you the information about hardwood that you didn’t know. Hardwood property itself was always a farmland.

Mark Morse was a freshman at Harwood when the school first opened.

It was owned by Griffith family, they were in arrears for property taxes.

And at the time, that was about 1964 or five.

No, it used to be the cow paths became the cross country trails. The cross country team at Harwood is one of the most proud in the state, and the trails around Harwood are where they warm up, practice and compete for home meats. John Kerrigan, coach of the cross country team knows this all too well as he played a key role in the formation of the various trails sprawled across the campus.

Original hardwood had 100 acres of land. And there was a woman who lived near Harwood Alice DeLong. And Alice was a naturalist. She had like a nature trail club, or the kids at Harwood, along with another teacher and science teacher at Harwood developed this nature trail. Most of them were already existed as like a deer trail, or the one that goes along the brook Africa passed upon and parallels the Brooklyn we have two newer trail systems. One over here is Tigers turret, and then starts Pinewood teacher Nordic legends. The first one section is the poop loop or the ship loop. And the reason that’s a ship is because when they built it, the one trail down was just covered with mud at the bottom of the ski hill. And so they had to dig big ditches to draw the water out of the soil. It was so muddy, it was just it looked like you know, poop, you know, anything above it or to the side is all closed for the deer yard.

The trails are known for their use in the fall, but let’s not forget, when the snow starts to fall.

We also had a ski slope, you know, sitting on the top of it was a an engine from an old Volkswagen booked to do take an off the top of the mountain. And they’d have a rope Toad pulled kids up and down the hill.

And every year, the Alpine team in the Nordic team, we would drag it up up to the top of the hill. And if you’ve been up there, there’s a little platform up there that we put it on. And you can see some old telephone poles that were set in there for the for the rope for the rope towel, and we skied up there after school, that was fun.

But then the school decided that it was too much of a liability that it’s a risk, somebody could get hurt, and they would have to insure it. And their insurance rates were going to be really high. So they told us we could no longer have the rope tow.

Everyone knows that the trails are filled with water. But did you know that there were water which is within your

Dalzell road? There were dowagers that lived up there.

And that’s how downhill and yes, they were water witches they were they date back their family date back to the 1700s. And they were dowsers and dowsers are people who have a natural gift and you’re able to find water. And they would go all over the state sometimes other parts of the country, people would call them in and ask them if they could find water on their property. And if you go in the cemetery, I don’t know if you’ve seen the small cemetery. That’s right near

the smaller road, the long road is an old old cemetery. headstones go back to the 1700s. And if you look in there, you can see whole families, entire families that were wiped out within days. And that was from tuberculosis. Many of them moved away.

So, but anyway, that was a big fighting community up there that we asked Ross what he likes most about the Harwood trails.

Gotta go into 100 things in my head.

So what I like about is the Ryan’s Ridge Trail. I think that’s just super fun. Ryan’s ridge. That’s my son Ryan. He used to have a cabin up there. One day he shows up at his cabin. And it was a couple of the kids there. And some some rough kids that didn’t, didn’t respect those cabins. And he said, What are you doing here? This is my cabin, you can’t, you know, come here. And they said, Oh, too bad. And you know what company or so feet, they got in a fight or whatever, he kicked them out. And the next day he came back and his tablet was broken? Well, we found out that Ryan was not the only one living on the trails.

It was a group of people, the rainbow people that were living down here born false. And somehow a branch of them came up and discovered some trails and they were camping out on the trails. And the administrators went over there and talked to them and said Look, you can’t be here. This is private property, school property. And they didn’t leave as only they had to get the state police to come and chase them out.

In common with people living on the trails are scary. Wait until you hear about the haunted dolls.

And there was a girl who went to school here she was on the track team decided to move in up there on word Hill and they put a urine and so strangely enough, these dolls appeared out in front of her yard is ran by and every year so the kid on the cusp of you kids would add a doll you know, whatever, we put something or you know, a carriage or something, you know, kind of add to it. And it’s kind of funny, you know, people that go up there they like what is that? You know, I was like, pretty scary located.

And I run with a bike quite a bit, my friends when they bike there and I do Strava they take pictures of the dolls and we all share and it’s kind of spooky. It’s like what the heck’s going on here? Tom cow and Father Tom said he was skiing with a friend last winter and they were going to pass that section where the dogs were and it was a head on the trail just to head it off. And his friend got a professor what is this? You know?

This is hidden hardwood, and I hope you enjoyed your walk down the trails.