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Official Town Site
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General News: A New Road Leads to Nature Museum
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| Jonathan Kruk leads the children out of the farmhouse to the new road. |
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| The road is carved from the gently rolling countryside. |
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| The excited crowd gathered for the opening ceremony. |
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| Karima Gebel, George Muser, Cynthia Krupat, Kevin Quigley, Jackie Grant and David Redden get ready to cut the ribbon. |
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| Curt Muser with members of the Jivaro tribe in Ecuador in 1931. |
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| The Muser Road entranced is marked with this sign. |
September 28, 2008
The Hudson Highlands Nature Museum officially opened a new road and entrance off Angola Road on Saturday with the help of children, a pied piper, and local dignitaries. Muser Road, which also leads to the new town park called Angola Road Park, is named in honor of a man who supported the nature museum from its earliest days fifty years ago.
The celebration of the new road got underway at the Outdoor Discovery Center, part of the former Kenridge Farm. Storyteller Jonathan Kruk, dressed like an entertainer in a long-distant time, told the crowd of eager young children his story of the Pied Piper of the Hudson Valley. The children then followed behind him, waving streamers, as they skipped up the road that meanders through fields and woodlands to the tent for the big celebration.
Museum chairman David Redden praised the road, which, he said, “takes you right into our glorious landscape.” Indeed, as you enter the road from Angola Road, Storm King Mountain and Black Rock Forest fill the landscape and as you wind down it, you are drawn ever closer to the harmonious details of the scene.
Jim Taylor, of Taylor Recycling, spoke of the recycled products that his company had donated to complete the gravel, one-third mile road. George Muser, the son of Curtis Muser, for whom the new road is named, and his sisters, Karima Gebel and Cynthia Krupat, were also on hand for the celebration. The Muser family donated $90,000 for the road construction and other funds were raised through corporate donations and individuals who bought paving stones to support the effort.
Bubbles filled the air along with the excited chatter of the children as the Muser family, Cornwall town supervisor Kevin Quigley, museum executive director Jackie Grant and chairman Redden cut the ceremonial red ribbon.
George Muser recalled after the celebration that his father had been a lover of the world and nature since his youth in Belgium when tales of Native Americans living in the natural environment captured his imagination. In 1931, Curtis Muser took off on a solo expedition to the Amazon headwaters in Ecuador where he lived among the Jivaro Indians, whose head-hunting prowess was well known and where shrunken heads adorned their living areas.
“His life as a businessman was secondary to his world of ideas,” George Muser said as he remembered his father. His sister, Karima, said that he was always bringing home oddities and made his children eat things like chocolate-covered ants and grasshoppers.
After he retired from his business, Muser practiced archeology throughout Mexico, where he helped to secure a five-ton Olmec sculpture for an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Muser was passionate about the indigenous cultures of the Americas and he went on to become the chairman of the Museum of the American Indian, in Manhattan.
After the Muser family bought a home in Cornwall-on-Hudson in the 1950s, he supported the fledgling nature museum and in later years he raised funds to help the museum expand from its original location on the Boulevard in Cornwall-on-Hudson to Kenridge Farm, his son, George, said.
George, who still lives in the village, has followed in his father’s footsteps as a lover of nature, a hiker, and a member of the museum board today. Looking around at the rolling hillsides and the dwindling crowd, George thought of his father, who died in 1992. “He would have loved the heck out of this,” he said. “He always loved a crowd.”
The entrance to the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum from Route 9W will remain open for another month.
Click on any photo for a larger view.
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