Another famous glacial erratic lay about a mile west of the Bronx River at 166th Street and the Boston Post Road.An immense loaf-shaped boulder of sandstone and gravel conglomerate, it had been a popular camping spot for groups of Native Americans travelling the trails that long preceded the Boston Post Road.
While the Native American name for this landmark seems to have been lost to history, to the local English farmers the huge purplish rock shot through with small stones and gravel looked just like a great big Christmas plum pudding, and so they named it the Pudding Rock.
The Pudding Rock continued to serve as a gathering spot for yet another group of people.Protestant French Huguenots who had settled in New Rochelle would often hitch up their wagons on a Sunday and follow the Boston Post Road to New York City, where they would join their fellows to worship at the “French Church” on John Street in lower Manhattan.The Pudding Rock, looming up alongside their route about halfway there, was an inviting spot to pull over for a rest and a picnic, and the Pudding Rock became known as a Huguenot landmark.
Like the “Indian Cave” in Hunt’s Point, the Pudding Rock is no more, having been destroyed early in the 1900s to make way for apartment houses in a rapidly urbanizing South Bronx.
Stephen Paul DeVillo
