HISTORY OF WASHINGTON CROSING STATE PARK
Lecture lead by Historian and Author Peter Osborne.
North County Branch Library, 65 Halstead Street, Clinton.
December 10, 2014
Peter Osborne is a writer and an historian who has worked in the public history field for more than thirty years. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Osborne's interest as an historian is in regional history, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Osborne was the executive director of the Minisink Valley Historical Society in Port Jervis, New York from 1981 to 2009 and also the Port Jervis City Historian. During his directorship at the Society he was responsible for the Society's Fort Decker Museum of History, and the interpretation of its long and eventful history which included its destruction during Joseph Brant's raid into the Minisink region in 1779. After that he served as the Curator of Education and Special Events at the Red Mill Museum Village in Clinton, New Jersey from 2010 to 2011. Osborne has just completed Where Washington Once Led: A History New Jersey's Washington Crossing State Park, which is now available on-line and in area bookstores. He is presently working full-time on a new state park history entitled No Spot in the Far Land is More Immortalized: A History of Pennsylvania's Washington Crossing Historic Park which will be available in early 2014.
Osborne has been published widely over the last two decades and has written four books on the depression era and state parks - We Can Take It! The Roosevelt Tree Army at High Point State Park 1933-1941 and Images of America Series: High Point State Park and the Civilian Conservation Corps, Images of America: Hacklebarney and Voorhees State Parks and Images of America: Promised Land State Park.
In addition, he has written about the Minisink Valley region's history including the Delaware River Heritage Trail Guide, Perseverance and Vigilance: A History of the Decker Stone House, Our Town: Historic Port Jervis 1907-2007, and designed Hail Matamoras: Matamoras, Pennsylvania 1905-2005, a commemorative book. His company, the Pienpack Company published his latest books, For Always, Memories of Janis, and Lewis and Clark and Me. His latest book, co-authored with Mark Hendrickson and Jon Inners, So Many Brave Men: A History of the Battle at Minisink Ford was considered for the George Washington Book Prize in 2011.
During his long career he has served on the board of directors of the Depot Preservation Society, Port Jervis Centennial Committee, Orange County Historical Society, the Grey Towers Heritage Association, the Delaware and Hudson Transportation Heritage Council, the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway and the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Sussex County, New Jersey.
Osborne is also the owner of the Pienpack Company. the mission of his company is to provide exciting journeys of discovery into our nation's history, and the Minisink Valley's regional history through presentations, lectures, demonstrations, motor coach tours and publications. The Pienpack Company has been providing programs to civic, historical, fraternal, church groups, seminars and meetings for thirty years.
