This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Local History Like You've Never Heard It

Balance Rock and The Great South Mountain Raid

            BALANCE ROCK AND THE GREAT SOUTH MOUNTAIN RAID

 

            When the railroad line came to Nyack in May of 1870, the area was a center of shipping, manufacturing and commercial activity. But despite a pronounced industrial focus, it was widely known as a place of great natural beauty. The city fathers had entirely unselfconsciously adopted the slogan “The Gem of the Hudson” as an official motto. And in reporting on the initiation of rail service, the New York Times placed considerable emphasis on the visual attractiveness of the village.

Find out what's happening in Nyack-Piermontwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

            The arrival of the railroad meant that suddenly Nyack, rather than being four to six hours away by boat or horse drawn carriage, was only one hour from Manhattan. This new proximity led almost immediately to a boom in one of the minor industries of the area - the resort business. Multistory hotels began appearing on Main Street, Broadway and even South Mountain off Highland Avenue. By the 1890’s Nyack had become an early model for the modern day Hamptons, a place for the influential and the wealthy to vacation or “weekend.”

            At the time urban intellectuals were beginning to question the benefits of unchecked industrial expansion and many were promoting the appreciation of nature as an antidote. Nyack certainly had no shortage of attractions for city dwellers looking to commune with the physical world - swimming in the river, hiking in the woods, scenic glens, water falls and mountain tops with spectacular views. But the most celebrated feature of the area was a wonder which appeared to defy the laws of nature itself. A gigantic boulder perched at the peak of South Mountain which had somehow come to rest in a precarious position near the edge of a very, very steep incline hundreds of feet above the village. It was called Balance Rock.

Find out what's happening in Nyack-Piermontwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

            The boulder itself was somewhere between 20 and 22 feet long, about 10 feet high at its thickest and 10 to 12 feet wide at its widest. Its northern end projected into the air five or six feet above the ground. And at its southern end, which was both narrower and lower than the rest of the rock, smaller rocks had been stacked to make it possible for the athletically inclined to climb onto its top surface and majestically observe the view.

            Balance Rock had always been known locally, but as vacationers came and went word of the phenomenon spread beyond the county and throughout the region. When postal regulations changed to allow cards with printed pictures to be sent through the mail at reduced rates in 1901, numerous companies began producing post cards showing various views of “Balance Rock, South Mountain, South Nyack, N.Y.”  causing its renown to become even more widespread. And the notoriety it gained during this period would be the force which drove an absolutely bizarre series of events a half century later.

            It is common practice for the graduating class in American high schools to engage in some sort of “prank” which causes the surrounding community to note their passage. Typically these antics take the form of obnoxious but relatively harmless actions. But in the mid-fifties a graduating class at Nyack High decided they wanted more. Painting your class year in ten foot high numerals on the side of the school building may well make a statement. But it is not lasting. And they had a plan which they believed would cause their class to be remembered for generations.

            One evening as graduation approached a group of seniors went up to South Mountain and tried to roll Balance Rock off its perch. They failed miserably. With 15 or 16 of the strongest seniors pushing as hard as they could, the rock did not budge.  They tried pushing from different angles and different positions, but it had no effect. The boulder did not move even one thousandth of an inch. Ultimately, exhausted and defeated they gave up and went home.

            The senior class of the year following also made an attempt to roll the boulder off the mountain, as did the class of the year after that. But they failed as well. And there was a very good reason why.

            The Nyack High School seniors of those years had a fundamental misunderstanding concerning the nature of Balance Rock. Looking at the giant boulder which a glacier had deposited at the top of the mountain at the end of the Pleistocene, they assumed that as the ice receded gravity should have caused it to roll off the mountain towards the river. That some force of serendipity must have intervened to temporarily prevent the natural course of events.

            They were not alone. Almost everybody who made a casual observation of Balance Rock came to the same conclusion. This was in fact the basis for its fame as a natural wonder. But all were mistaken. Although it did sit on a small outcropping at the top of mountain, and there was within a few feet a drop off and an almost sheer slope which ran into the village below, the boulder itself was resting on an area of nearly flat ground. Furthermore, it was wedged between several outcroppings of bedrock. It was not in any sense unstable or miraculously balanced. And had the boulder been sitting in the exact same position hundreds of feet below on level ground, nobody would have questioned its equilibrium.

            There were a couple of other facts about Balance Rock which went unnoticed by the Nyack seniors. First was the amount of force needed to move an object of that size. Depending on its exact volume it would have weighed somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 lbs. And to lift or roll it over the bedrock outcroppings would have required on the order of at least 2,000 strong teenagers rather than 20.

            Beyond this there was also the matter of rolling it. Assuming they had somehow managed to dislodge the boulder it is not by any means likely it would have rolled anywhere. Its shape was a lot closer to a brick with rounded corners than it was to a sphere. And had they succeeded in pushing it off the top of the mountain the most probable result would have been that it slid 30 or 40 feet then stopped, rather than rolling all the way into the village.

            Kids 17 and 18 years old are not generally known for their ability to make a nuanced analysis of any given situation. It is not surprising that the facts listed above went unrecognized by the students. It is however, astonishing that the elected and appointed officials of the area bought into exactly the same series of misconceptions.

            When news of the attempts to dislodge Balance Rock became known, the local authorities reacted as if a disaster had been narrowly averted. In their minds the boulder represented a hazard equal to that posed by a huge perfectly round, 500,000 pound steel cannonball teetering at the mountain top and capable of rolling down into the village at high speed, crushing houses and killing people. But rather than hire engineers to make a rational assessment of the danger they began thinking of ways to stop a seemingly inevitable cataclysm.

            People who were directly involved in the incident which followed, say it happened in 1959. That year the seniors at Nyack decided they would again return to South Mountain and attempt to roll the boulder off the precipice. But the individuals organizing the prank had considered the failures of the previous classes carefully and concluded that what was needed was more manpower. While the earlier efforts had involved small groups of only 15 to 20, they were determined to attack the task with a force of 40 or 50. They were also aware that in endeavors of this sort when 50 people agree to participate typically only about half of them actually show up, so they recruited far more than 50. In fact, they even breached the accepted etiquette of Senior Pranks and invited underclassmen who were large and strong to be part of the undertaking.

            At the time Nyack High School educated many students from outside the Nyack School District. Kids who lived on the New Jersey border in Tappan attended Nyack, as did kids who lived in Blauvelt and Orangeburg. The result was that not only were there an extraordinary number of people with knowledge of the confidential plan for the prank, they were spread over a wide geographic area.

            There are many old adages relating to the difficulties involved in keeping a secret a lot of people know. And this case did nothing to dispel the truth in those expressions of folk wisdom. The local authorities became privy to the details of the plan very shortly after they were disseminated amongst the participants.

            Most of the printed references and post cards relating to Balance Rock refer to it as being located on South Mountain in South Nyack. And while it did sit on the mountain immediately above the village, in fact the southern boundary of South Nyack actually veers north, and the true location of the boulder was just beyond the border in the town of Orangetown. And this meant the Orangetown authorities would have the responsibility of dealing with the prank.

            They could very easily have contacted the high school and requested that an assembly be called. Then had a police officer address the students, advising everyone involved that they were aware of the plan, that they considered it dangerous and that anyone participating would be arrested and charged with serious crimes. This would have stopped the kids in their tracks. But it was not the approach they chose.

            Instead, they formed, what today would be called, a task force of officers from area police forces. And in the early evening of the appointed day, several hours before the teenagers were due to arrive, they began ferrying policemen up Tweed Boulevard to the area of Balance Rock and dropping them off.  The officers then secreted themselves in positions surrounding the site and waited.

            A life long resident of South Nyack who was one of the high school kids involved that night described the actual events in entirely undramatic terms.

 

“There wasn't much to it. A group of us were at Balance Rock waiting for more kids to show up when the cops suddenly came running out of the woods and arrested us. Nobody tried to run or resist. The cops didn’t slap us around or anything.  After they took us into custody they made us line up and give our names, addresses and phone numbers. Then awhile later they came out and said that they were calling our parents and that if one of our parents would come over and pick us up and guarantee we would show up in court for trial, they would release us and we wouldn't have to go to jail that night.”

 

 

As the kids waited, events were going on behind the scenes which would save them considerable anguish. One of the first people called was a gentleman from South Nyack named Breland. And had the authorities realized exactly who he was, they may well have thought twice about making the call.

            Homer Breland was a small man, maybe 5'4” and 90 lbs. He walked with a limp, had a strong deep voice and spoke with a slow, very pronounced southern drawl. Born in the late 1880's into a large dirt poor family in southern Mississippi, he had only escaped being forced to abandon his education and work alongside his siblings in the fields at young age because he was tiny and infirm. Instead, he completed high school, then attended a small southern college. And after college, Harvard Law School, paying his tuition by working for the school as a janitor.

            Breland was brilliant, quick witted and an absolutely tenacious litigator. Other attorneys were not anxious to go to trial against him. And within moments of receiving the call he was on his way over South Mountain to Orangetown.

            Because as a boy in the rural south he had witnessed the rights of the local poor whites and blacks routinely violated, he had a special intensity in any case where he thought governmental agents were acting inappropriately. According to those with whom Breland shared the details of his actions that night, as soon as he arrived and the authorities explained what had transpired at Balance Rock, he came to the conclusion that since the students had been arrested before they actually even attempted to move the rock, they had not broken any law.

            Breland sprung into action and devoted his full intellect to altering perceptions in the way only the very best and most highly skilled of lawyers can. Every word used was chosen in careful consideration of even the smallest benefit in connotation. The large group of teenagers became the children of the community. And through a series of non-confrontational questions which seemed at first to be simple and innocent attempts to gain an understanding of events, he dismantled their case.

 

            I’m not really sure I understand why these young people were taken into custody. You said that they were merely standing there and not engaged in any sort of illegal activity when they were apprehended. It almost seems as if, and I am sure this could not be correct, they were arrested for what some of you thought they might be thinking…

 

            After a few minutes of discourse with Breland what the authorities had assumed to be an airtight case began to seem to them badly flawed. They had intended to charge the kids with fairly serious crimes. In so doing they hoped the widespread publicity which would inevitably follow would have a chilling effect on anyone contemplating a similar attempt in the future. But suddenly they found themselves facing the alarming realization that if such charges were pursued the probable result would be a well publicized loss in which they came off looking buffoonish, an eventuality which might actually encourage additional people to make attempts at dislodging the boulder.

            On the defensive they explained to Breland the grave dangers they believed were involved and tacitly acknowledged that while perhaps the arrests had not been technically legal they were the only course of action which could have prevented an imminent tragedy. Then challenged him to explain what he would have done in their position.

            Without any hesitation, Breland stated that he certainly would not have illegally arrested anyone or violated their rights, he would simply have placed a single uniformed officer in a marked patrol car parked on Tweed Boulevard at Balance Rock, an action which he asserted would have resulted in every single one of the students driving on by and returning home. 

            After a quick consultation amongst themselves the assembled officials suggested that perhaps matter might best be handled unofficially. No charges would be pursued, no reports filed. They would release the kids with a stern warning and the entire matter would be forgotten. And with that, at least as far as the official record is concerned, The Great South Mountain Raid had not happened.

 

We had been sitting there for awhile after they said they were going to call our parents, when Red Lewis” (an Orangetown Police official of the time) “came out and gave us a dressing down – telling us that had we rolled the rock off the mountain we would have killed numerous people and caused thousands of dollars of damage. Then he said that since we were students they had decided not charge us. But he also said that they had our names and addresses and that police would be patrolling the mountain regularly and if they ever saw any of us anywhere on the mountain they would arrest us immediately and take us straight to jail. That was good enough for me. I never went back up there.”

 

           The authorities never realized it, but despite the fact charges were not filed and there were no newspaper headlines about the matter, their actions of that evening had accomplished all of the goals they intended. The kids involved thought they had gotten a break and were not about to challenge the police by returning to the scene of their crime. And as news of the incident spread by word of mouth it did have a profound chilling effect on those younger. The students of the area never again attempted or even considered rolling Balance Rock off the mountain.

            Unfortunately, for the local officials the matter was not so easily forgotten. They were irrationally but sincerely convinced the boulder could be dislodged by a relatively small number of kids. And after the first failed attempt they had come to believe that the idea of rolling Balance Rock off the mountain would take on a life of its own. That from that point forward it would become an irresistible force acting on the minds of the young, compelling them to make further attempts  until ultimately some group succeeded. The fact that in the aftermath of the raid they were no longer hearing rumors of such plans did not allay their fears. If anything the silence made them even more nervous.

             In the end it was the authorities themselves who were captured by whatever mystical power the idea possessed. Some say it happened in 1966, others say '67 or '68. Nobody knows for sure. In fact, nobody even knows who did it. It could have been the Town of Orangetown, The Palisades Interstate Park Commission on whose property the boulder sat, or the Village of South Nyack. Or a joint effort by all three. All that is known for sure is that at some point during that rough time frame, a governmental highway repair crew appeared at Balance Rock.

            The igneous rock of the area is extremely hard and difficult to cut or drill, but because of conditions which existed as it was formed, it suffers from imperfections in its crystalline structure and is easily shattered. Balance Rock was no exception. It had multiple flaws. The larger ones can be plainly seen in the turn of the century postcard reproduced as part of this story. And once modern jackhammers were brought to bear against those areas it did not stand a chance. Within a matter of hours the boulder which had been locked in place at the top of the mountain for 10,000 years and had withstood earthquakes, hurricanes, countless freeze and thaw cycles and the efforts of several small groups of high school students to dislodge it, was fractured into ever smaller pieces and the resulting rubble pushed off the precipice.

            There had been no public discussion, no engineering study, no environmental impact statement, no referendum. The natural wonder which had inspired awe in so many was simply gone.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?