The Elephant Rock Community
by Olive B. Davis, daughter of Herbert Peterson
(Presented at Monterey Historical Society meeting, September, 1975)
Elephant Rock is located in the woods between Hupi and Elephant Rock Roads. It is a sandstone formation weathered by frost and storms. Perhaps this is Homer Dowd returning home with his sack full of fish.
On Hupi Road about 100 feet past the intersection of Hupi Road with the Elephant Rock Road there is a. huge sandstone rock about 10 feet from the road. If you look quickly you may think that you are seeing an elephant. This rock was the inspiration for the name of the road. Mr. Wallace Tryon in his manuscript on the history of Monterey says that the rock was once on the farm of Hyland Dowd.
Hyland Dowd had two daughters, Grace became Mrs. Scott and Jennie became Mrs. Rogers. Many of the early settlers on Elephant Rock Road bought land from the Grace Dowd Scott estate. Jennie Dowd Rogers lived for many years on the Hunger Mountain Road in the first house you come to after leaving Route 23. The house is still standing. Mrs. Rogers celebrated her 82nd birthday in 1943 and is reported to have said at that time that her ancestor Cornelius Dowd came to the Berkshires in 1730 and bought land from the Indians for six felt hats. Another version of the transaction is that the land was bought for ten beaver hats. The original name of Hupi Road was Dowd Road as the land on both sides of the road was owned by the Dowds. At one time members of the Elephant Rock group considered asking the town to change the name of Hupi Road to that of Beaver Hat Road.
The founder of the Elephant Rock community was the Rev. Dr. Robert Brown, husband of brave and loyal Mable Brown. She showed both of these qualities in aiding her husband in his camping and other activities. Dr. Brown was a vigorous; hearty man over six feet tall who had many talents. He was a poet, carpenter preacher and teacher. He was born in Manitoba, Canada, and after working at several jobs in Canada, hitch hiked with a friend to Oberlin, Ohio, were he enrolled in Oberlin College. It was there that he met Mabel Milliken. They graduated from Oberlin about 1900. Soon after they were married, Robert went to Yale Divinity School, where he graduated in 1903. He became pastor of the Second Congregational Church in Waterbury, Connecticut. About 1905, while pastor of the Waterbury church, he came to Monterey with some friends, loved the beautiful wooded lake and hills and sent a telegram to his wife asking her to bring camping equipment and a shovel and to meet him in Great Barrington. Mabel, after gathering things together, took a train to Norwalk, changed to a train for Great Barrington, met Robert and together they took the stage to Monterey. It seemed like a long trip. The camping expedition on Lake Garfield was such a success that they continued to spend summer vacations there. They camped at various locations, at first on what is now “the Point” and after 1910 settled on a site on the Parker property.
About 1910, while Robert and Mabel were camping on the Parker Property, Mrs. Nellie Bogart, a widow from Mt. Vernon, who was the mother of Harvey Bogart, bought some of the Dowd property. About 1918 she sold some of this land to Dr. Nathaniel H. Ives of Mt.Vernon for a girls' camp to be run by his daughters Eleanor and Alice. The camp became Camp Fernway, later Camp Genmere, and now Camp Shalom.
This song was found in a collection of Dr. Alfred Emmel’s papers.
Dr. Fred Emmel, a friend of Dr. Ives, bought land about 1920 from Mrs. Bogart and built a boathouse. Adjacent to Dr. Emmel's lake shore property were two houses built by a carpenter from Stockbridge, Mr. George Breed. These cottages were later sold to Mr. James Wilson and his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lindsay. Today these houses are owned by Mr. and Mrs. John Camp and Mr. and Mrs. John Roth.
Mrs. Nellie Bogart seemed a frail little woman but she had great courage and vision. She envisioned a bungalow type community, and laid out roads such as Lakeside Drive and Maple Avenue. She built five houses and developed the spring on her land near the Hunger Mountain Road and piped water down, so that as early as 1936 we had gravity water. Several cottages she rented. She sold one house opposite the entrance to the Elephant Rock Road to Dr. and Mrs. Harley Lutz in 1932. Mrs. Bogart lived at one time in the first house on Elephant Rock Road. At her death this house was bought by the Elephant Rock Association and made into a clubhouse. Today, it is owned by Dr. and Mrs. David Lowman. It was Nellie Bogart's son Harvey and his wife who sold the last of Nellie's lakeshore property to Dr. and Mrs. John Miller of New Haven about 1968·
Dr. Brown and his wife loved Monterey and wanted to buy land on the lake. In 1920 Mrs. Grace Dowd Scott agreed to sell him 100 feet of lakeshore and to allow him to use the dead chestnut trees on the mountain to build a log cabin. The cabin was built in 1922 by Dr. Brown with the help of some friends and John Benson of Monterey and his old white horse "Dolly". Originally the cabin had one large room with a fireplace, two sleeping lofts; a porch with a beautiful view of the lake and an outside kitchen with a fireplace type grill. Since then the cabin has been enlarged.
The enthusiasm of Robert and Malbel proved to be so contagious that relatives, Oberlin classmates and friends who visited bought property and built homes. Among relatives who bought land before 1930 were Mabel's sister, Mrs. Grace Behr and her brother Mr. Max Milliken and Oberlin classmates Earl and Katharine Adams. Harley and Rachel Lutz bought in 1932, as did the associate pastor of Dr. Brown's Waterbury church, Dr. Morton Owens. Mr. Herbert Peterson, a friend of a friend of Dr. Brown's bought land in 1930.
As the community grew there were common problems concerning the private road, electricity, the lake shore, and the water system, and to solve some of these problems an association was formed. The purchase was to protect the interests of property owners. After the purchase of the club house the association became a social one as well as a business one.
There are many happy memories of the social activities. Memories of sitting around a camp fire on the shore of the lake, singing songs and yodeling to hear the echoes from the opposite shore or hill. There were cookouts at the Brown's and Saturday night dinners at the clubhouse where Dr. Lutz made his special chefs salad and Rachel brought delicious baked beans. There were amateur theatricals. At one time Mabel Brown impersonated Eleanor Roosevelt to our delight. There were interesting programs given by members and their guests.
It was the people who made up the colony that made us feel fortunate and rather special. Three members of the group wrote poetry.
Katharine Adam's landscapes were much admired and she excelled in the decorating of old tin trays and furniture using early colonial and Dutch designs. It was Katharine who restored the old shutters on the village store and repainted the lists of products originally sold there. It is hardly fair to mention one name and not others, as all gave of their talents and participated in the activities of the colony and those of the town, and helped to sponsor them. Perhaps Dr. Brown gave the most with his dynamic leadership and enthusiasm. He died in 1938 of a heart attack in Oberlin where he had been Professor of Practical Theology in the Oberlin Theological Seminary. His wife Mabel continued to spend her summers in Monterey until her death in 1970 at the age of 92.
Over a period of 40 years there have been many changes. Trees have been cut so that the lake is not as wooded as it was. The eagle, wildcats, whip-poor-wills and most of the owls and herons have gone, but we have Canada Geese, motor boats and water skiers as well as sail boats, canoes, and fishing boats. Due to the generosity of Edith Chamberlin and the Adams' grandchildren we have a beautiful black top tennis court.
Many of the present property owners are children or grandchildren of the original Elephant Rockers. They seem as enthusiastic as their forebears about Monterey, the beauty of the lake and mountains and the community. Perhaps their thoughts, in the spring of the year, are not unlike those recorded by Rachel Lutz in the following poem:
Jana Burch with Ned and Bob Cornish and kittens.
In early summer with the scent of May
A restless yearning creeps into my day
A faint, sweet sound from far away -
Listen! ‘Tis the call of Monterey.
Like swallows who fly north in early spring
Had we the gift of flight we'd soar and sing
And take our way with fancy running free
Back to our hills and lake and hemlock tree.
What is the secret of this deep content?
What gives us leave to call the days, "Well Spent."
That measures off our summers year by year?
There is a spell upon the place, I fear.
A sweet and subtle spell quite green and fresh
And if it catches us within its mystic mesh
And holds us so until the turn of fall
None has complaint, it is the wish of all.
—Rachel Young Lutz