Stone Ruins Locationless (Reverse) Cache

STONE RUINS

• One log per person on this cache.
  
• One log per ruins.
  
• If a ruins is the subject of a geocache, it may not be used. i.e. if the cache was specifically placed to highlight the ruins, it may not be used. If there is a geocaches in the general area and it wasn't placed to bring you to the ruins, then it is ok. (that makes all the Palisades ruins off limits)
  
• The ruins MUST be made of stone. Just any ol abandoned shack in the woods doesn't count. I want really old ruins, so only stone buildings can be logged.
  
• The ruins must be in the woods - so an abandoned inner city building won't do. (I was asked about something out in the desert. I basically want something out in nature. as long as you can demonstrate this, and as long as it keeps with the basic concept as mentioned in the beginning, then it's ok, as long as it is made of stone!)
  
• There must be ruins of a structure to qualify this cache. Walls (as in borders of property) will no do, nor will driveways. I will accept non-house structures such as a gristmill, a bridge or something else that is a structure of some kind, although houses are prefered. I will accept a ruins if all that's left is a foundation, as long as there is something visible that makes it clear a structure was there. In one case I found the remains of John Ringling's house and all that's left was exposed pipes and a few bits of concrete. This would not be a qualfied find IMHO.
• You and your GPS must be in the shot, no vacation photos, yaddayaddayadaa.... Your pictures must demonstrate that the ruins are made of stone (see above)
  
• Tell us the story behind this place (if you can) and tell us your experience finding it, I'm sure they'll be interesting.
  
• My submission to start this off is the Van Slyke Castle, located within Ramapo State Park in NJ. I planted a geocache there and realized the subject would make a good locationless cache that won't be an easy log. The info below is taken directly from the park website.
  

  

  
  

  THE VAN SLYKE CASTLE

  Ramapo Lake was formed 12,000 years ago during a glacial retreat. When Dutch settlers found it, They named it after the muskrats that lived there -- Rotten Poel (Rats Pond) but the English only heard Rotten Pond and the name stuck. In the later part of the 19th century, Jacob Rogers, the son of the founder of the locomotive industry in Paterson, N. J., assembled a three square mile tract of land around the Pond from a dozen parcels of land. He greatly increased the size of the Pond by placing a stone dam across its outlet. Rogers died in 1901, and his will directed that the property be given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That organization leased and sold it to Howard P. Frothingham, a New York financier and avid fisherman in 1905. It was thought that he would turn it into a first rate game preserve. After changing the name of the lake to "Le Grande Lake", however, he sold two years later to Pliny Fisk, an associate. Fisk was expected to establish a community similar to Toxedo Park on the property. The realization of this scheme, however had to wait the purchase of the property a year and a half later by William Porter. He divided the land between two corporations: The Ramapo Club and Ramapo Park. The former owned the lake and a strip of land around it, and the later, the hilly woodland. This procedure would allow owners of houses on the hills to share the use of the lake. Porter built himself a house (which later came to be known as Van Sly Castle), but his death only a few years later led to the abandonment of the plan. The Club was merged into the park in 1914, and the subsequent history of the corporation is unclear.

      Clifford F. MacEnvoy appears to have gained control of it in the early 1920's. He was a wealthy developer, and was a general contractor for the construction of the Wanaque Reservoir. He built a house on the large mountain northeast of the lake. The state purchased what is now the Ramapo Mountain forest from his estate in 1976.

      The history of Van Slyke Castle revolves largely around Ruth A. Coles and her husbands. Coles was a nurse who had the good fortune to care for Charles E. Halliwell, a captain of industry in New York. She became his second wife in the fall of 1906. He died a year later leaving her one and a half million dollars, a large fortune in those days. in 1909, she married William Porter, a stockbroker and close friend of her former husband. At that time, Porter was building a house on Fox Mountain above Le Grande Lake, which he called "Foxcroft". Porter died in an automobile accident two years later before he could realize his development of the former Rogers' tract. In 1913, Cole married her third husband, Warren C Van Slyke, an attorney. He was an assistant to the chief of naval intelligence in World War 1, and later argued the claims resulting from the sinking of the Lusitania. They lived near Jamaica, Long Island. After Mr. Van Slyke's death in 1925, his widow lived year around at Foxcroft. She died in 1940 at the age of 63. Foxcroft was left to her family who promptly sold it. In the early 1950's it became involved in a bitter divorce and was not used. Vandals soon broke in and finally torched the mansion in 1959.