Theills New York

[Clad the Impaler]

Hi. I'm from out of state, but am looking for info on Letchworth Village aka Willowbrook. It is in Theills in Rockland county. Anyone know if this is public property? Is detecting legal here? Property dates to the early 1900s from what I can tell. I've only found urbex videos online, and they say groundskeeping staff will let you walk around the grounds and take pics. Any info on detecting here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

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[Professor of Engineering]

I hope you are given permission to hunt the area.

 

[Clad the Impaler]

I hope you are given permission to hunt the area.

I'm trying to find out if it's public or private, and if detecting would be legal. The urbex videos I watched mentioned that groundskeeping staff were ok with letting people walk around and take pics. Kinda seems like it's ok to be there as long as it's during the day and you don't attempt to enter any of the buildings (seems like they have legitimate concerns regarding liability). However, detecting on the grounds and digging targets might be another matter entirely.

 

[gunsil]

I lived right down the road from there for forty years. Part is now a golf course, (no detecting there), part belongs to a college, can't get permission for that either. Anyways, after the place closed and before it was divided up and re-purposed many local hunters were there before you, myself included. I believe Willowbrook is another mental institution, Letchworth was always called Letchwoth. The hunting there wasn't actually as good as I had hoped, but none of the inmates were allowed to carry money and there was no place there for them to spend it. Local PD is alert there because the danged scrappers hit the place hard. I believe you could hunt the sports fields there, but they are not very old. There is an old town park behind Letchworth, but it's been hunted for years by locals. I started hunting that area in 1970. Where are you located Clad??

 

[Clad the Impaler]

I lived right down the road from there for forty years. Part is now a golf course, (no detecting there), part belongs to a college, can't get permission for that either. Anyways, after the place closed and before it was divided up and re-purposed many local hunters were there before you, myself included. I believe Willowbrook is another mental institution, Letchworth was always called Letchwoth. The hunting there wasn't actually as good as I had hoped, but none of the inmates were allowed to carry money and there was no place there for them to spend it. Local PD is alert there because the danged scrappers hit the place hard. I believe you could hunt the sports fields there, but they are not very old. There is an old town park behind Letchworth, but it's been hunted for years by locals. I started hunting that area in 1970. Where are you located Clad??

Hi gunsil. Wow, 1970, that's the year I was born lol. I've only been detecting since 2009. I'm located in Chicago. Door knocking is unheard of here (too difficult), and most of the public places have been pounded to death (not much left to find). I have a week of vacation coming up in late Oct/early Nov, and would like to possibly road trip east if I can afford to do so. You east coasters have more goodies due to the colonial history. My area wasn't even settled until the early 1800s, and not incorporated until the mid 1830s. Much of it is heavily urbanized so, as you can imagine, a lot of the old spots that might have yielded goodies have long since been paved over (kinda hard to detect strip mall parking lots...).

 

[gunsil]

Hi Clad, we have the same problems here. Urban sprawl is all over the place. Historical markers saying "such and such revolutionary war troops camped here" but all you can see are 1960s to now housing developments. There are four revolutionary war forts within a ten mile radius of Letchworth Village, one has been covered by highways, one by a state park, and the other two are off limits as is the one in the state park. All the public schools in this county were hunted heavily by some friends and myself forty or more years ago, and by many others since then. Getting seriously hard to find anything here unless one obtains permission for private property which also is getting harder to obtain or doing covert hunts on state park lands. There are some people still finding goodies around here with private property permissions and I know a covert hunter who does OK sometimes, but it sure isn't like when I started out and few people knew what a detector was, few knew what we were up to, and most importantly fewer cared. I hope you find some good spots if you head out this way. I am away on vacation usually for the month of Oct. but you can PM me when you're ready to head east and I can let you know if I've found any good places to try.