Hudson River's Wrath: The Story of the Great Haverstraw Landslide of 1906 a Natural Disaster Caused by Man

 Located only a stone’s throw north of the New Jersey border in Rockland County, New York, forty miles from Manhattan along the banks of the Hudson River nestled among the Ramapo Mountains, the town of Haverstraw is today a bustling yet still quaint village that is home to about 35,000 souls.

Originally settled by the Dutch in the 1660’s Haverstraw derives its name from the Dutch word ‘haverstroo’ meaning oats and straw.  Henry Hudson sailed past the present day site of Haverstraw during his historic exploratory voyage up the river which today bears his name back in 1609.  And during the American Revolution the place that the Dutch called ‘Haverstroo’ was integral to the Patriot cause as it was used by lookouts from George Washington’s Continental Army to monitor British naval activities along the Hudson River.

Downtown Haverstraw Today

However, it was during the 19th century when Haverstraw first gained notoriety and was brought to the nation’s attention as the brick making capital of America.  During the American Civil War in the 1860’s, with increased demand, dozens of brickyards began to spring up on the banks of the Hudson River in and around Haverstraw, New York.  Haverstraw, and its many brickyards, are credited with having literally built Gilded Age New York City by providing the raw materials, namely bricks, for the ever expanding Big Apple.

By the turn of the 20th century over 350 million bricks were being produced each year in Haverstraw, and bricks with the names of Haverstraw’s many brickyards were being exported by the millions around the world.

But, in one of environmental history’s most cautionary tales, it was the lucrative brick making industry, the economic lifeblood of Haverstraw driven by a thirst for profit and man’s own hubris towards nature, that almost caused the town’s complete destruction on the fateful night of January 8, 1906.

19th Century Brickyard

On that night the most deadly natural disaster in the history of Rockland County, New York, occurred in downtown Haverstraw.  A massive landslide, a complete and utter collapse of the steep banks of the Hudson River, killed 19 residents of Haverstraw and injured hundreds more.

Five square blocks were completely leveled by the sinking earth and onrushing mud.  For years afterward residents of Haverstraw and the surrounding area would refer to January 8, 1906 as “Dark Monday”.  Even today, each year, the town still holds a memorial service for the victims of the tragic “natural” disaster that befell Haverstraw on that day well over a century ago.

At the time, in 1906 since the landslide knocked out all communication with the town and made travel in and out of Haverstraw virtually impossible except via foot or on horseback, it took two days for news of the disaster to travel down the Hudson and first be reported on in major newspaper across the northeast United States.

The headline for Wednesday, January 10, 1906 in the New York Tribune read:

TWENTY BURIED ALIVE:

MANY BODIES CREMATED--

WHOLE STREETS SWALLOWED by HAVERSTRAW PIT OF QUICKSAND

What became known to history as The Haverstraw Landslide of 1906, was actually a series of landslides and opening up of sinkholes that occurred in the town located atop a hillside on the banks of the Hudson River.

Landslide Damage to Haverstraw

It all began at about 11 pm on Monday night January 8, 1906 when the town of Haverstraw was in complete darkness and most everybody was sound asleep.  At around 11 pm a crack that ran straight down Rockland Street in the center of town began to widen.  Some residents reported hearing a creaking, or a buzzing sound, but since the crack had been there for several years it seems like no one really paid it any mind, and most of the townspeople simply remained indoors and in bed.

But then, what had been an innocuous crack in the middle of the street, a small fissure that had been there for as long as many residents could remember, suddenly opened up and swallowed several homes and buildings whole.

The New York Tribune called it, “A sudden landslide late Monday night which dumped the northeastern corner of the Hudson River village of Haverstraw into a yawning clay pit.”

Residents told of hearing rumbling sounds and then rushing outside into the cold January night only to see their homes teeter on their foundations and then topple over into a giant pit of muddy clay as if the caverns of Hell itself were opening up to swallow Haverstraw whole.

First one house, and then another, toppled over and fell into the giant crack in the earth.  Some buildings simply broke into pieces, while others just seemed to suddenly topple over and land at the bottom of the pit with a loud thud.

Within a half an hour of the first landslide, two more occurred, one at 11:20 and another at around 11:30.  Nineteen souls instantly plummeted to their deaths, lost in the great gaping pits.  Many of the bodies were never recovered.

The landslides and resulting sinkholes ended up swallowing five square blocks of the town.  Not only that, but the landslides sparked dozens of fires across Haverstraw as gas lines were ruptured by the collapsing earth.  Firefighters, at the time, desperately struggled but were unable to put out the fires which kept popping up across the city due to the cold January temperatures and the fact that the landslides had destroyed many of the town’s water mains.

It took nearly twenty four hours to finally get all of the fires under control.  Upwards of twenty-five buildings and about a quarter of the town itself, were either swallowed by the great gaping pit or lost to fire.

The Tribune reported that on Tuesday, January 9, 1906, “A hundred volunteers worked in the pit.  They shoveled clay as only excited men can, and picked around in the debris in a frenzy, but up to a late hour last night not a single body was discovered.”

Thirty families, around 150 residents, were left homeless as a direct result of the landslides.  In a town where everyone knew everyone else, the pain and anguish as rescuers struggled in vain to find friends and loved ones in a deep muddy pit of clay was almost indescribable.  Every resident of the close-knit brick making community of Haverstraw was in some way touched by the tragedy of the Great Landslide of 1906.

The only saving grace, a true miracle of God, was that in a town made up of many large and young families, not a single child was listed among the nineteen missing and presumed dead in the days after the landslide.

But, perhaps, the greatest tragedy of all is that the Haverstraw Landslide of 1906 could and should have been prevented.  Even in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy almost everyone realized that what happened could have been easily prevented and that what was called a “natural” disaster was entirely manmade.  

Making bricks requires tons and tons of clay. 

Haverstraw sat, and sits today, along the banks of the Hudson River on a hillside of the Ramapo Mountains, a range that runs across Rockland County, New York, and into northern Bergen and Passaic Counties in New Jersey.

Map of the Ramapo Mountains 

The clay beneath Haverstraw was ideal for brick making, and hence, Haverstraw became “the brick making capital of America” by the year 1900.  But, in order for the town to keep producing its tens of millions of bricks each year more and more clay had to be harvested.  Brickyards, always looking to keep up production, removed the topsoil from around Haverstraw to more easily access the clay, and then began to dig ever deeper tunnels beneath the town itself to gather more clay to make more bricks.

Cracks and fissures, like the one that ran along Rockland Street, that started the initial landslide on January 8, 1906 formed all over the town and ran beneath buildings, fields and streets across Haverstraw.

December 1905 was a bitterly cold month with several heavy snowfalls.  Temperatures in January of 1906 warmed considerably, but there was a period around the new year of 1906, when there were days of torrential rain.

This combination of rampant tunneling beneath the town, weakened soil from melting snow and torrential rains, pre -existing cracks and fissures in the surface of the town itself and pressure against the banks from the swollen Hudson River directly caused the tragedy of the great Haverstraw Landslide of 1906

Sadly, in the months before the landslide townspeople had warned of the danger and attempted to do something about it.

“The dangers of the undermining of the village have been known for months and repeated efforts have been made to halt the work.”  In this case the “work” mentioned in the New York Tribune article was brick making itself.

The work was never halted and it appears as if nothing ever happened in the courts to prevent it from going forward, but apparently, local government did take the townspeople’s concerns seriously enough to have the Haverstraw Chief of Police go door to door to personally warn every tenant who lived within a few blocks of Rockland Street of the possibility of a landslide occurring only about two days before January 8, 1906 in the immediate aftermath of a heavy rainstorm.

However, caught between economic necessity, a drive for profits and the possible dangers of a landslide nothing was ever done to stop, or even curtail, tunneling beneath the town of Haverstraw in the days and weeks prior to the disaster.

The landslide was so severe that it would forever alter the town’s landscape.  Today, there is a lagoon along the banks of the Hudson River in Haverstraw itself that forever marks the spot where the Landslide of 1906 occurred and is still the final resting place for the bodies of some of the victims that were never recovered.

Lagoon formed by Landslide

Although, after the landslide more precautions were taken with regards to tunneling beneath the town and harvesting clay, Haverstraw remained the brick making capital of America right on up through the 1920’s.  It was only during the 1930’s as steel and other metals began to replace bricks in popularity as building materials that the brick industry slowly began to die out in and around Haverstraw and the residents of that quaint New York town could begin to rest easy assured in the knowledge that no tragedy like the Great Haverstraw Landslide of 1906 would ever befall them again.

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