Though the name may evoke images of a Tolkien-esque fairyland, the Bronx neighborhood of Edenwald is a far cry from the Shire. Situated on the northern edge of the city, the community is anchored by two contrasting landmarks: the massive Edenwald Houses, the borough’s largest public housing development, and Seton Falls Park, a 30-acre woodland preserve traversed by what remains of Rattlesnake Creek. These two defining features stand almost as mirror images of each other at the heart of the neighborhood, bisected by the busy corridor of Baychester Avenue. Beyond the park and the housing project, the neighborhood is a mix of one- and two-family homes and row houses. In 1640, the Dutch West India Company “purchased” much of what would become the East Bronx from the local Siwanoy tribe. In 1654, typical of the nebulous conception of real estate and land rights at the time, Thomas Pell also purchased a good portion of the same land from the Siwanoy. Pell, who was English, was allowed to keep his holdings by swearing allegiance to the Dutch until England assumed control. He was granted the title of Lord of the Manor of Pelham in 1666. Edenwald, part of Pell’s expansive territory, was long considered part of Eastchester. The name survives today in a nearby Bronx neighborhood and another just across the city line in Westchester County. Running through the area was Rattlesnake Creek, which once flowed unimpeded from Wakefield to Eastchester Bay. The waterway earned its name from an infestation of rattlesnakes that slithered between and sunned themselves atop the jumble of rocks lining the creek, a serious drawback to settling in the area. Eventually, someone came up with the bright idea of releasing a drove of feral hogs with a taste for rattlesnake into the woods. Pigs, along with mongooses, honey badgers and hedgehogs, are the only animals that are essentially immune to snake venom. In no time at all, the snakes were gone. Later, the pigs would turn their attention to the city’s sanitation problem, cheerfully gorging themselves on the mounds of rotting food scraps that clogged New York’s streets. But by the mid-19th century, the little oinkers had worn out their welcome and in the Great Piggery War of 1859, like the rattlesnakes they once feasted on, the pigs were banished from the city. Sometime after the Revolutionary War, James Roosevelt, an ancestor of two U.S. Presidents, purchased the former snake pit. Eventually, the land was acquired by the Seton Family whose most famous descendant was Elizabeth Seton, the first American ever canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church. Seton’s eldest son, William, built “Cragdon,” a sprawling fifty-one-acre estate in the center of what would become Edenwald. He cut down most of the property’s ancient cedars and dammed the creek to form two ponds and a waterfall. By the early 20th century, the Bronx was officially part of New York City. The Setons had subdivided their property and sold it off. John H. Eden built his own estate in the area, naming the property “Edenwald” (“Eden’s Forest” in German). The name stuck long after his house was gone. The former Cragdon estate was now under Parks Department control, and a small community grew up around it.