Rip Van Winkle was a character in a short story by the American writer Washington Irving. In the story, Rip lived in a little town in the Hudson valley, in New York, in the 1770s, around the time of the American revolution. Rip went out hunting one day, took a nap under a tree, and fell asleep. He work up 20 years later to find himself a citizen of a brand-new country-the United states of American.