DIVERSE DOCUMENTS: OUR VARIED HERITAGE by S. Gardner

In the early 1940's Joe Murchio operated a boxing training camp at Greenwood Lake, starting in 1939.  Many famous boxers trained there, including Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Floyd Patterson.  The boxing camp attracted lots of interest from the locals, who would seek out autographs, signatures, and photos of these men, and they added to the community life of the Village.  The Murchio camp was sold to Eddie McDonald and renamed "The Long Pond". The building, The Long Pond Inn, burned down in the 1971.

Murchio's was a training camp for boxers of all races and ethnicities, and as such, it helped erase boxing's "color line." 

Joe Louis was one of the superstar boxers who helped the cause of integration in the sports world.