Replica of the Rock of Amersfort

In the middle of Brooklyn’s Amersfort Park you can find a replica of a 200,000-year-old glacial boulder known as the Rock of Amersfort. According to the story, in 1661, a young squire named Everhard Meyster came across a massive boulder outside the Dutch town of Amersfoort. Though the rock weighed more than 15,000 pounds, Meyser bet some friends that he could convince the townspeople to undertake the absurd feat of hauling the boulder into the city. With an offer of beer and biscuits, the squire persuaded some 400 residents to drag the rock from the moors to the city center. Years later, when the people of Amersfoort discovered the ruse, they were so embarrassed that they buried the boulder. It remained underground until 1903, when it was unearthed and made into a monument.

The park shares a name with that town, a nod to the 17th-century Dutch settlement of New Amersfort, which was established just south of this site.