I'm Back! "Home on the Range"

Oh, give me a home ........

Mother and calf buffalo in Custer State Park, South Dakota

........ where the buffalo roam,

Buffalo in Custer State Park, South Dakota

Where the deer .....

A deer on the street in Gardiner, Montana

.....and the antelope play,

A pronghorn antelope in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Where seldom is heard .....

A joke sign on a store in Gardiner, Montana

A discouraging word,

A sign in the Badlands of South Dakota

And the skies.....

Black Hills of South Dakota --click on to enlarge to see what is on the mountain

Are not cloudy all day.

~

~courtesy the "Home On The Range" song, circa early 1900's

A boardwalk in the South Dakota prairie

Hello everyone! I'm back from a glorious two week vacation in the wonderful "Wild West"! We visited Colorado, South Dakota, and Wyoming, made some brief stops in Montana, and then went back to Colorado for the Labor Day weekend. It was an early 35th wedding anniversary celebration trip to see our son. daughter-in-law and grandson, and then on to visit a few National Parks that we've always dreamed about seeing. I took so many photos that my "C" drive ran out of space, and so I've been busy backing up my photos on a second external hard drive that has more capacity than my first.. Why do computers have to be so darn fussy?

We visited a lot of the beautiful American wilderness and saw many wonderful and exciting sights, and I hope to blog about them in a few future blog posts. I hope you'll join me as I relive some of these special moments.

The USA has such a variety of sights and natural treasures ... we are truly fortunate to live in such a beautiful and diverse country!

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument - Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY

High on a hill in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, New York, stands a monument in memory to the 11,500 soldiers, sailors, and patriotic New York men, women, and children who were taken prisoner during the 1776 Revolutionary War. The monument, which is sometimes referred to as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, stands in the center of what was once called Fort Putnam, an actual Revolutionary War fort, named after the Continental Army's General Putnam.  As both the formal burial site of nearly 12,000 American Martyrs and bustling greenspace serving nearly 200,000 residents of the surrounding neighborhoods, Fort Greene Park may be the closest thing to "sacred space" one can find in New York City.

At first, Continental Army prisoners were incarcerated in jails, churches, and homes. When the British ran out of space, they began using decommissioned or damaged ships that were anchored in Wallabout Bay in Brooklyn (the area now abuts the Brooklyn Navy Yard) as floating prisons.

The conditions on board the ships were horrid. Many diseases were rampant, food and water were scarce or nonexistent, and the ships were overcrowded and wretched.

Many of the captives died from disease and malnutrition. Their emaciated bodies were either thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves in the sandy marshes of Wallabout Bay. 

Even though the British surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1782, the surviving prisoners were not freed until 1783 when the British abandoned New York City.

A view of Manhattan across the East River from the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument

Please click on to enlarge.e

In the years following the war, the bones of the patriots would regularly wash up along the shores of Brooklyn. These remains were collected by Brooklyn residents who had hopes of creating a permanent resting place for the remains. Three monuments have been erected since the early 1880s, with the present 148 ft. The Doric column monument was dedicated in 1908. The bones of the patriots are interred in the base of the crypt.




The Fort Greene Park Conservancy has done much in recent years to restore and maintain the monument after many past years of neglect. There is an informational Visitors Center near the monument that has pictorial exhibits plus displays of Revolutionary War weapons and uniform buttons that have been uncovered in the park over the years.

Today, Fort Greene Park is a beautiful place to relax and enjoy nature. It is also a fitting resting place for the early martyrs of our country and a reminder that liberty does not come without a price.