Talk: life on Wawayanda Mountain

Vernon — The Vernon Township Historical Society will present Farming on Wawayanda Mountain, with guest speaker Alfred E. Houghtaling Jr., on Sunday, July 12, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Vernon Senior Citizens Center on Church Street. Houghtaling, 84, the author of seven fiction and nonfiction books, lived for 40 years on his family farm on Wawayanda Mountain, land that is known today as Wawayanda State Park. He will speak about more than 100 years of farming there. He will have on display his collection of photography of the farm and the township at the turn of the century and later years. Houghtaling, who now lives in White Sulphur Springs, recalls traveling on the mountain when the roads were very narrow and barely passable. “We were forced to travel the crooked road through the woods that led to the old double pond called Wawayanda Lake,” he said. He recalls the old iron forge at the lake that was used in the 1800s. “We would climb to the top of it and use it as a make-believe fort,” he said. Houghtaling will also talk about the one-room schoolhouse. How many people today can say they went to school in a 1929 Model A Ford?” he asked.