Rip Van Winkle was a charactor in a short story by the American writer Washington Irving . In the story, Rip lived in a litter 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 and fell asleep. He woke up 20 years later to find himself of a brand-new country-----the United States of American.