By the time Washington Irving was old enough to wear long pants, the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam had already spread north along the Hudson. Other settlers followed. Engravings from the time show that small towns had taken root in clefts and coves along the river’s banks like clusters of wildflowers that bloom in protected nooks and crannies along a mountain trail. It was many years later, while living in England, that Irving wrote about the region that he had passed by as a boy. In The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, he introduced the world to Rip Van Winkle.
The tales of the old Indian trader seem like a plausible source of his inspiration and should, in the absence of any otherevidence, be believed. But it also seems possible that Irving came by his considerable gifts in some more supernatural way when, as a youth, he found himself in North Tarry Town after dark. No town in the Catskills was more spellbound than North Tarry Town (the town officially changed its name to Sleepy Hollow in 1997), as Irving suggests in the story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman who issued forth from the graveyard each night in search of his missing head.
