The Wondrous and Curious Tweed Tunnels

In 1910, the National Guard clear-cut a mountaintop in Rockland County for the purpose of establishing the “Finest Rifle Range in World,” as a Times headline put it. Soldiers would soon be refining their skills amid “ravishing scenery,” overlooking the Hudson. By 1911, significant problems were apparent. Overlooking the Hudson meant shooting east, into the rising sun. The shooters, having first exhausted themselves scaling the mountain, often missed their targets, sending stray bullets over a ridge, below which were houses, in the villages of Grand View and South Nyack. A new Times headline read, “Rifle Range is a Menace to Life.”