Harriman, New York: The Railroad Baron's Village

The village of Harriman takes its name from Edward Henry Harriman, the railroad magnate who controlled the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific lines at the turn of the twentieth century and assembled forty thousand acres in the Hudson Highlands around this area starting in eighteen eighty-six. His estate, Arden, culminated in a ninety-seven-thousand-square-foot mansion designed by the firm Carrere and Hastings, completed in nineteen oh nine atop a twelve-hundred-foot mountain. After Harriman's death, his widow Mary donated ten thousand acres and one million dollars to New York State to create Harriman State Park, one of the first large public parks in the Northeast.

The park today encompasses over two hundred miles of trails. The village at its edge, renamed from Turner to Harriman, carries the family name but little of the wealth.