flowering shrubs, coffee plants, and exotic plants such as yucca," according to Hoboken historian Melissa Abernathy. At the time, the rest of Hoboken was largely an undeveloped, mosquito-infested swamp. There was also an abundance of turtles to be found — the swampy wetlands were known as "Turtle Grove" — and this led to the founding, in 1796, of The Hoboken Turtle Club (see illustration below). According to a story published by the Penn Museum, "The Club became a venerable part of the local culinary landscape and continued throughout its existence to offer turtle soup and turtle steak dinners to its members." In the 1820s, the Stevens family began to drain the swamp and fill nearby marshes. The family, who shared interests in engineering, invention, sports, real estate, and business, began to envision the waterfront area below their estate as a combination recreational/pleasure resort for New Yorkers looking to escape from the city during sweltering summers and on weekends. In 1824, before the full development of the landscape surrounding Castle Point, Col. Stevens offered to sell the site to the city of New York for use as a public park. (This was decades before the creation of Central Park.) After the proposed sale was rejected by the city of New York, Col. Stevens decided to finish the project himself. Development of the grounds Stevens described the newly developed parkland as a "place of general resort for citizens, as well as strangers, for health and recreation". He further boasted that the grounds were "easily accessible, and ... in a few minutes the dust, noise, and bad smells of the city may be exchanged for the pure air, delightful shades, and completely rural scenery." Historian Tom Gilbert wrote: In 1829 Hoboken's permanent population reached 500. Two years later the Stevenses expanded and upgraded their pleasure grounds to raise the tone and appeal to the discriminating emerging urban bourgeoisie. This is when they began using the name "Elysian Fields," after the paradise of classical mythology where earthly heroes somehow spent a blissful eternity .... The wooded section north of the Castle Point site of the Stevenses' Italianate villa was cleared and landscaped. In 1831, the New York Commercial Advertiser printed the following account: [We] visited yesterday afternoon the Elysian Fields, as the now cleared and beautiful groves and lawns in the vicinity of what was formerly known as Turtle Grove, have been called by