Several years ago while hiking, Pat Cannon caught sight of a pristine ridge line from a point in western Ramapo.

"This has to stay like this," she remembered thinking. "It's an integral part of the entire area."

It was then the Johnsontown Road resident decided to launch an effort to preserve that view from certain development.

"They can put people on the moon, but more property is not being made," Cannon said last week. "We have to find a way to live here in as much harmony as we can. That means we've got to have green space."

Cannon's efforts did not go unrewarded. Rockland County's open-space acquisition program will soon preserve the 235 acres off Johnsontown Road as county parkland. The new acquisition, which will connect Harriman State Park and Dater Mountain County Park, will bring to 615 the number of acres saved under the program.

The county will use a $350,000 state grant to offset the $4.9 million purchase price.

"It's a beautiful piece of property, with wonderful rock outcroppings and flora and fauna," County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef said last week. "The title work is completed. And we've sent it to the Legislature to approve it for purchase. It will be a passive park. But from an historical point of view, you can still see where coal was burned for charcoal for the iron mines. There are Indian rock shelters. And yes, there are timber rattlesnakes."

Vanderhoef said it is one of the first properties the county identified as important open space and is the largest single purchase since the county's open-space program started in 1999.

"This is part of the New York-New Jersey Highlands, which has been talked about for protection," Vanderhoef said. "In the regional context of saving the Highlands, it is an important piece."

Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence agreed that the property represents a significant purchase.

"The 235 acres — half of which is in Sloatsburg and half in Ramapo — is the key that protects the ridge line, comes down to the Ramapo River, and connects Harriman State Park and Dater Mountain County Park," St. Lawrence said. "The county open-space program that saved the Concklin and Erickson farms in Ramapo also saved Johnsontown Road."

Historian and writer Marjorie Stevenot, who lives on the road that pays homage to Johnsontown's founders, has delved into the past of this once-prosperous hamlet.

Johnsontown, which once extended from the Ramapo Pass to what is now Lake Kanawauke, was founded around 1740 by three Johnson brothers, Stevenot said.

A 1930 news article said that the oldest brother, James J. Johnson, and his wife, Deborah, followed the Ramapo River through the Ramapo Pass to Sloatsburg and turned up the Stony Brook Valley about six miles to present-day Lake Sebago.

Employed by a shipbuilding concern, the brothers were attracted to the mountains of Haverstraw and Stony Point, which were heavily wooded with chestnut, oak, hickory and pine.

"What would become Johnsontown Road was probably once an Indian trail," Stevenot said. But for the European settlers, she said, "It became a lifeline from the Orange Turnpike to Haverstraw."

Most of the wood in the area ended up not being used for shipbuilding, she said, but as fuel for the area's mills, foundries and brickyards. Meanwhile, local residents would become known for making an assortment of wooden implements, wooden steamer baskets and wooden pitch brooms.

Little evidence is left today of the area's early settlers. But Cannon believes the Johnsontown Road property would not have been saved unless the county put money aside, and officials — including Rockland County Director of Environmental Resources Allan Beers, St. Lawrence and Vanderhoef — championed the purchase.

"I applaud them for having the foresight, so that parcels like this could be saved," she said.

Reach Nancy Cacioppo at ncaciopp@thejournalnews.com or 845-578-2439