2020 began auspiciously with a January 1st Town Topics front page article entitled FOHW Volunteers Look Forward to Veblen Property Lease.
The article quotes Mayor Liz Lempert, who described Herrontown Woods as “one of the jewels of Princeton’s park system,” which “had gone mostly untended for decades. We’re very fortunate to have the enthusiastic volunteers of the Friends of Herrontown Woods, who have already done extensive and exceptional maintenance work on the network of trails and stream crossings.”
As FOHW prepares to sign a lease with Princeton to begin rehabilitating the Veblen House and other structures left to the public trust long ago by Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen, we look forward to adding to the ways the buildings can complement the hundreds of acres of preserved land along the eastern Princeton Ridge, and making them one more component of the Veblens' wonderful legacy in Princeton.
As stated in the Town Topics article:
“We’ve come to treasure being a part of Veblen’s legacy, and we want to tell people about it and about what one person can do,” Hiltner said. “Veblen saw the connections between geometry and woodland trails, between intellect and nature.”In an example of remarkable serendipity, the article was noticed by an advocate of "dry stone walling" who lives on an island in Ontario and does daily searches for cultural heritage sites around the world. She then contacted a friend who grew up in Princeton and now builds stone walls in Vermont. The friend contacted us, came to visit, and gave us insights into how to repair walls in Herrontown Woods, including the horse run in the photo.
