The Cadwallader Colden Mansion today

The once handsome mansion now stands in complete and utter ruin at the intersection of Stone Castle Road and Route 17K in the town of Montgomery, New York. The woods have grown up around the ruins of the mansion to claim back the land 241 years after Cadwallader Colden Jr., felled the first tree on the property he had inherited from his father. If you peer through the trees you will catch glimpses of the stone walls and foundations.

And if you brave the undergrowth and the trash, as the photographers below have done, you will stand before the crumbling walls of the mansion, and if you try very hard, you will see it in your mind's eye as it once was and you will have been witness to part of your own history. It is men like Cadwallader Colden, Sr., who braved the wilderness of a new land, literally hacking their dwellings out of the forests ... building their homes and taming the land with crops and cattle. It was a hostile land that they groomed with their sweat and their blood, often burying those family members that did not survive the harsh conditions.

The pictures below were taken from rchrdcnnnghm's photostream on flickr. Copyright is owned by rchrdcnnnghm.