The conductor announces Oakland Station resort, and the passenger cars quickly empty. It is summer in the late 1800s, and travelers from New York City and Paterson are eager to begin their vacations. They have come to enjoy a mountainous place of pristine beauty, cooled by a river, ponds, and springs. After two and a half centuries as a sleepy farming community within sight of New York City, Oakland had become a summer resort with its own railroad station and grand Victorian hotels.

First settled nearly a century before the American Revolution by ten Dutch families, this Ramapo Mountain community has a rich heritage that includes the founding of the Ponds Dutch Reformed Church in 1710, George Washington's visit to the Van Allen House in 1777, and the establishment of the borough of Oakland in 1902.