History behind the pyramid/trapezoidal fire places you see across Harriman SP?

[DSettahr]

As one travels throughout the Harriman backcountry, it's not uncommon to pass old masonry fire places. They all have a similar design- like a pyramid or trapezoid, with slanted edges that slope out and downwards from the edge of the fire place itself.

A few examples:

Many of them are shown on the NYNJTC map with a bold "F" marker, but the key indicating that it refers to a fire place also includes the language "fires not permitted." And presumably they are also not legal spots to camp since camping is permitted at the shelter sites only. In any case, most of them don't really strike me as being nice campsites anyways- they are nearly always located in rugged, uneven terrain with very little in the way of flat ground to facilitate nice tenting.

But from what I've seen, despite being shown on the NYNJTC map, there's never any mention of them in the NYNJTC's "Harriman Trails" guidebook. So- does anyone here know what the history is behind these fireplaces? Were they constructed by the state in the early days of the park? Or perhaps constructed by the Boy Scouts for use as part of their White Bar trail network? Or is there some other explanation for them?

[BillyGr]

Could they be something dating as far back as the CCC?

Knowing that they did many projects in park areas, it certainly seems possible this was something they might have done.

Likely also that the rules that far back would have allowed camping in many spots and having such "professional" fireplaces may have even been an early way of trying to get people to camp in specific areas rather than here, there and everywhere.

That middle one, with it being kind of near an edge, might even suggest the possibility of an earlier shelter (or perhaps plans for such a structure) facing it. Similar setups exist on the AT (one that comes to mind is Kay Wood just outside of Dalton, where the land drops off even more sharply just past the fire area).

[DSettahr]

It's possible that there were shelters at those spots once... but the NYNJTC guidebook is also super detailed and does mention other former shelter locations. Actually, given how detailed the guidebook is on the history along each trail described, it's kind of notable that it seems to make zero mention of these fireplaces.

And yes, in the early years of Harriman it was more or less the wild west when it came to rules- a lot of the trails were constructed by community members with zero authorization from the state. (The history of the "trail wars" of Harriman and the chaos that resulted from zero oversight concerning the creation of the trail infrastructure is an interesting one.)

[Learning The Trails]

I scroll past this topic every few days on the main page every few days or so...

It's kinda a bummer that DSettahr never got a definitive answer on this.

[BillyGr]

I scroll past this topic every few days on the main page every few days or so...

It's kinda a bummer that DSettahr never got a definitive answer on this.

Perhaps now he has been able to meet those who built them and ask them directly