Squadron "C" Farm
Town of Huntington, Suffolk County, New York
Marker Inscription
Comprising 82 Acres Owned By 101st Cavalry Regt. NYNG Squadron "c" Cavalry Club 1903 To 1961
The Story
This 82-acre tract on Long Island served the Cavalry Club of Squadron "C," 101st Cavalry Regiment of the New York National Guard, from 1903 to 1961. In an era when mounted cavalry still trained for war, weekend soldiers drilled, stabled horses, and socialized here, bridging the last decades of the horse-mounted arm and its mid-century mechanization.
Why it matters
It preserves the memory of the citizen-soldier tradition and the twilight of American cavalry, when National Guard units carried the transition from horse to armor.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the turn of the twentieth century, Long Island was still a landscape of farms, estates, and open country, and the horse was as central to warfare as it was to daily life. When this 82-acre tract came into use in 1903, the United States was in the midst of what we now call the Progressive Era — a time of reform, modernization, and a National Guard being reshaped into a more professional reserve for the regular Army.
The cavalry occupied a special place in that world. A mounted soldier needed years of practice to ride, shoot, and maneuver as part of a disciplined body, and that training could not be improvised on the eve of a war. So states maintained cavalry units of citizen-soldiers — men who held ordinary jobs during the week and became troopers on weekends and in summer camp.
New York, with its dense population and long militia tradition, fielded some of the most active such units in the country. Ground like this — with room to stable horses, drill in the open, and gather afterward — was exactly what a weekend cavalry unit required to keep its edge.
People & events
This farm belonged to the Cavalry Club of Squadron "C," part of the 101st Cavalry Regiment of the New York National Guard, and it served that community of troopers from 1903 until 1961. Behind those dates lies a very human story: men who volunteered their weekends, cared for their own mounts, and formed the kind of tight fellowship that shared hardship and shared horses tend to produce.
A cavalry unit was more than a military formation; it was a social world. The word "club" in the name is telling. Here the troopers not only drilled and maintained their animals but also gathered, ate, and marked the milestones of unit life together, the way volunteer companies had done in American towns for generations.
Over nearly six decades, the men who passed through this ground lived through enormous change. The unit that trained on horseback in the early years belonged to an army that, by the middle of the century, had traded most of its saddles for engines and armor. The long span from 1903 to 1961 quietly traces that whole transformation.
Its place in the American story
The American cavalry tradition reaches back to the earliest days of the Republic, but its horse-mounted form did not survive the twentieth century intact. Across the 1930s and 1940s, armies the world over concluded that the tank and the truck had inherited the roles once filled by the mounted trooper, and cavalry units were steadily reorganized into mechanized and armored formations.
That national arc is written into this small piece of Long Island. A place that began as a home for horsemen endured into an era when the horse had left the battlefield — a living link between the last decades of mounted service and the mid-century army of steel.
Just as important is what the site says about the citizen-soldier. The idea that ordinary Americans should train in their own communities, keep one foot in civilian life, and stand ready when called is one of the oldest threads in the national story. A weekend cavalry club is that idea made concrete.
If you visit
Come here and let the numbers on the marker do their work: eighty-two acres, and nearly sixty years. Stand at the edge of the tract and try to picture it filled not with quiet fields but with horses, riders, and the ordinary bustle of men who spent their weekends learning a demanding craft.
This is a place that rewards imagination more than spectacle. There is no battlefield drama here — just the ground where citizen-soldiers of a bygone arm came to train and to belong. Think about how much of a trooper's world revolved around the animal he rode: the stabling, the feeding, the patience.
If you're building a Long Island route around local history, this makes a thoughtful, low-key stop — a reminder that the National Guard tradition ran through quiet suburban towns as much as through great armories. Give yourself a few minutes to read the marker, take in the scale of the land, and consider how the horse soldier faded into memory within a single lifetime.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Oyster Bay Veterans Memorial
Town of Oyster Bay, NY
This monument on Long Island pays tribute to all Americans who have served in the nation's armed forces. Rather than singling out one war, it gathers the service and sacrifice of many generations into a single place of remembrance in the Town of Oyster Bay. Such community memorials became fixtures of American town greens and waterfronts across the twentieth century.
Bayville Veterans Memorial
Village of Bayville, NY
Standing in the seaside village of Bayville on Long Island's North Shore, this memorial honors local residents who served in four of the twentieth century's defining conflicts — the First and Second World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Like thousands of hometown monuments raised across America, it turns a village green into a place of civic remembrance, binding a small community to the nation's larger sacrifices from 1917 through the 1970s.
Killingworth
Village of Lattingtown, NY
Here on the north shore of Long Island once stood "Killingworth," the estate of Captain John Underhill (1597–1672), a soldier who arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and became one of colonial New England's most consequential — and controversial — military commanders. Underhill led English forces in the Pequot War of the 1630s, later served the Dutch in their wars against Native peoples around New Netherland, and eventually settled on Long Island, where he held public office and lived out his final years. The house is gone, but his grave endures in the nearby Underhill Burying Ground, tying this quiet Nassau County ground to the earliest, most turbulent decades of European colonization.
Wallin Fountain
City of Glen Cove, NY
This memorial fountain in Glen Cove honors Lieutenant Commander Norman "Homer" Wallin, a naval officer remembered by his family with a gift to the community. Public drinking fountains have long been a way for families and civic groups to combine a practical amenity with a lasting tribute to someone they lost. The dedication ties the memory of one man's naval service to the everyday life of the town.