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Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books
Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills
For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains , David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein. This collaboration has had environmental, economic, and cultural consequences.
Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created the great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water.
The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence writers and artists had upon urban residents - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation.
In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.
Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created the great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water.
The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence writers and artists had upon urban residents - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation.
In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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February 28, 2023
The Catskills have supported agriculture for over 1,000 years and Esopus is a Native American term. “In the late 1600s, Dutch and then English colonists settled in the flat lands between the Hudson and the mountains, but the imposing eastern range of the Catskills generally prevented movement further west.” Shandaken Township in 1875 produced 94,000 pounds of butter. New York City was too far to transport milk back then, so the big Catskill export was butter. Wondering where the hemlock is in the Catskills? Catskill tanneries killed off more than 7.5 million hemlocks; and so, the great stands of hemlock vanished. One local tannery alone between 1825 and 1845 consumed 480,000 hemlocks. Tannins from local hemlock bark tanned 500,000 hides to produce shoe soles in NYC. One of the largest tanneries was in Shokan back in 1833. Tanneries drove the fish from the streams, and soon closed discarded and dilapidated tanneries lay “scattered along waterways.”
The end of tanneries led to hoop making, and hoop shavings then heated many a home. The Esopus had so many water-powered sawmills that you couldn’t float logs down the river. But by the 1830’s more than 2,000 two-man rafts were floating down the Delaware toward Philadelphia during freshet season. Soon exhausted timber supplies led to the Catskills importing lumber. Ulster County switched from timber to exporting bluestone, chosen because it would not wear smooth and slippery when used for sidewalks. Crushed bluestone was also used for macadam roads. In the 1890’s, bluestone sidewalks were replaced by Portland Cement which was cheaper.
The Catskill Mountains became famous nationally through the Hudson River School and its painters, Thomas Cole and Fredric Edwin Church. Cole took many liberties with his paintings, which is why you can’t figure out where the heck he painted those scenes. Many painters did sketches in the Catskills and then went home to make the painting much more fantastic than real life. Cole eventually moved to Catskill to live and paint in his backyard studio. After the Civil War artists found the Hudson River School too realistic and preferred more impressionistic European art. Still, the Hudson River School made the Catskills famous around the nation.
For many travelers, the Catskills were only seen by passengers going up and down the Hudson on slow moving sloops. Commerce on the Hudson allowed New York to go from fifth in commerce in the US in 1790, to 1st by 1820. The highest mountain in the Catskills is Slide mountain at only 4,180 feet high. Slide Mountain got a hiking trail to its summit by 1891. Washington Irving wrote about the mountains from the river, having never set foot in the mountains before writing Rip Van Winkle, while James Fenimore Cooper wrote all about the frontier and its mountains from his flatlanders home in sedate Westchester County.
The Catskill Mountain House opened in 1824. It soon became world-renowned for its overlook views. The much larger Hotel Kaaterskill opened in 1881. NYC’s Central Park was an attempt at recreating the walks that Calvert Vaux had taken in the Catskills, so that NYC’s tired workers could enjoy a rest, not unlike the Calvert’s walks around Kaaterskill Park. The Catskills offered travelers “elevation plus accessibility.” Kaaterskill Falls would go rather dry in the summer leading a dam above to be built where, for a fee, the water could be let loose after the 1820’s. Catskills had areas that were rather revoltingly anti-Semitic, which led to areas (especially Tannersville, Fleischmanns, and Sullivan County) where Jews were welcome. Sullivan County became the Borscht Belt (Grossingers, the Concord) and a huge Jewish agricultural center with kosher chickens. One of the Jewish Catskill farmers became famous as the Max Yasgur who rented his 600-acre dairy farm to the Woodstock Music Festival. Onstage in the Borscht Belt is where Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Henny Youngman, Alan King, Joey Adams, Red Skelton, Buddy Hackett and Jackie Mason all got their start. The Concord Hotel accommodated 1,800 (where I was once hired as a gigolo in my teens by Jewish parents in the 1970’s in a attempt to convert their lesbian daughter); I still remember its cavernous dining rooms and nightly entertainment. When I returned to the Concord decades later as a staff photographer for Cosmopolitan magazine, just before it closed, it was much more sedate.
“Pot” hunters what you called unwelcome nasty-assed hunters who would kill deer for just the hides and leave the carcass to rot. Rainbow trout was introduced to local waters in 1878; they would soon fare well in the Ashokan Reservoir. “In 1909, many Catskills places moved at the pace of a real live horse.” The Holland Tunnel was finished in 1927, and the George Washington Bridge in 1931, which dramatically increased traffic to the Catskills. Before then in 1912, NYC trips to the Catskills took six hours travelling at less than 20 miles an hour. The massive wood structure Hotel Kaaterskill was destroyed by fire in 1924. The Catskill Mountain House was destroyed in 1963 after years of neglect; there is a sign where was once the “most famous view in nineteenth-century America.” Belleayre Ski Area opened in 1949. The NYS Thruway from NYC to Albany was finally opened making the NYC to Catskill trip possible in only two hours. Large scale employers IBM and Rotron appeared in the Woodstock/Kingston area then. “The town of Woodstock alone nearly tripled in size in the twenty years after the Thruway opened.” This book strangely says Bob Dylan left his Byrdcliffe house to move to Overlook Mountain instead of Ohayo Mountain. The six Catskill reservoirs provide almost 90% of NYC’s drinking water.
Imperial San Francisco intentionally destroyed the gorgeous Hetch Hetchy Valley inside Yosemite in 1923 to provide San Francisco with drinking water. Just so, New York City turned to flooding rural valleys and creating dams for its own drinking water. The takings began in 1907. Those who lived in the doomed New York Esopus valley before the Ashokan construction were largely paid by the city one half their lands value. During construction, three churches were built for workers: One protestant, one Catholic, and one “for coloreds”. Workers and their families created the largest village in the Catskills at the time with a population of 4,500. “Prostitution, cocaine, and drinking ran rampant.” Before the Esopus valley disappeared, the best trees were harvested, “graves disinterred, fences pulled down, barns burnt to the ground” and all structures removed. Bishop Falls then disappeared under the water. The New York Times soon wrote that the Ashokan Reservoir was the “greatest reservoir in the world.” The Hudson River Aqueduct to carry the water was seen as an engineering feat second to the Panama Canal. The water arrived at “the new Central Park reservoir.” The city owned not only the Ashokan reservoir but thousands of acres of forest buffer surrounding it. From 1914 to 1917, the city planted 3,000,000 evergreens around the reservoir. Then came the Roundout and Pepacton (the largest) Reservoirs. Photographers became fond of a new picturesque view, the Ashokan Reservoir waters with Slide Mountain rising up behind it.
Strangely, this book called “Making Mountains” has nothing at all to do with “making mountains”. Go figure. Still, it was a fun read, and I learned a lot about the area where I live.
The end of tanneries led to hoop making, and hoop shavings then heated many a home. The Esopus had so many water-powered sawmills that you couldn’t float logs down the river. But by the 1830’s more than 2,000 two-man rafts were floating down the Delaware toward Philadelphia during freshet season. Soon exhausted timber supplies led to the Catskills importing lumber. Ulster County switched from timber to exporting bluestone, chosen because it would not wear smooth and slippery when used for sidewalks. Crushed bluestone was also used for macadam roads. In the 1890’s, bluestone sidewalks were replaced by Portland Cement which was cheaper.
The Catskill Mountains became famous nationally through the Hudson River School and its painters, Thomas Cole and Fredric Edwin Church. Cole took many liberties with his paintings, which is why you can’t figure out where the heck he painted those scenes. Many painters did sketches in the Catskills and then went home to make the painting much more fantastic than real life. Cole eventually moved to Catskill to live and paint in his backyard studio. After the Civil War artists found the Hudson River School too realistic and preferred more impressionistic European art. Still, the Hudson River School made the Catskills famous around the nation.
For many travelers, the Catskills were only seen by passengers going up and down the Hudson on slow moving sloops. Commerce on the Hudson allowed New York to go from fifth in commerce in the US in 1790, to 1st by 1820. The highest mountain in the Catskills is Slide mountain at only 4,180 feet high. Slide Mountain got a hiking trail to its summit by 1891. Washington Irving wrote about the mountains from the river, having never set foot in the mountains before writing Rip Van Winkle, while James Fenimore Cooper wrote all about the frontier and its mountains from his flatlanders home in sedate Westchester County.
The Catskill Mountain House opened in 1824. It soon became world-renowned for its overlook views. The much larger Hotel Kaaterskill opened in 1881. NYC’s Central Park was an attempt at recreating the walks that Calvert Vaux had taken in the Catskills, so that NYC’s tired workers could enjoy a rest, not unlike the Calvert’s walks around Kaaterskill Park. The Catskills offered travelers “elevation plus accessibility.” Kaaterskill Falls would go rather dry in the summer leading a dam above to be built where, for a fee, the water could be let loose after the 1820’s. Catskills had areas that were rather revoltingly anti-Semitic, which led to areas (especially Tannersville, Fleischmanns, and Sullivan County) where Jews were welcome. Sullivan County became the Borscht Belt (Grossingers, the Concord) and a huge Jewish agricultural center with kosher chickens. One of the Jewish Catskill farmers became famous as the Max Yasgur who rented his 600-acre dairy farm to the Woodstock Music Festival. Onstage in the Borscht Belt is where Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Henny Youngman, Alan King, Joey Adams, Red Skelton, Buddy Hackett and Jackie Mason all got their start. The Concord Hotel accommodated 1,800 (where I was once hired as a gigolo in my teens by Jewish parents in the 1970’s in a attempt to convert their lesbian daughter); I still remember its cavernous dining rooms and nightly entertainment. When I returned to the Concord decades later as a staff photographer for Cosmopolitan magazine, just before it closed, it was much more sedate.
“Pot” hunters what you called unwelcome nasty-assed hunters who would kill deer for just the hides and leave the carcass to rot. Rainbow trout was introduced to local waters in 1878; they would soon fare well in the Ashokan Reservoir. “In 1909, many Catskills places moved at the pace of a real live horse.” The Holland Tunnel was finished in 1927, and the George Washington Bridge in 1931, which dramatically increased traffic to the Catskills. Before then in 1912, NYC trips to the Catskills took six hours travelling at less than 20 miles an hour. The massive wood structure Hotel Kaaterskill was destroyed by fire in 1924. The Catskill Mountain House was destroyed in 1963 after years of neglect; there is a sign where was once the “most famous view in nineteenth-century America.” Belleayre Ski Area opened in 1949. The NYS Thruway from NYC to Albany was finally opened making the NYC to Catskill trip possible in only two hours. Large scale employers IBM and Rotron appeared in the Woodstock/Kingston area then. “The town of Woodstock alone nearly tripled in size in the twenty years after the Thruway opened.” This book strangely says Bob Dylan left his Byrdcliffe house to move to Overlook Mountain instead of Ohayo Mountain. The six Catskill reservoirs provide almost 90% of NYC’s drinking water.
Imperial San Francisco intentionally destroyed the gorgeous Hetch Hetchy Valley inside Yosemite in 1923 to provide San Francisco with drinking water. Just so, New York City turned to flooding rural valleys and creating dams for its own drinking water. The takings began in 1907. Those who lived in the doomed New York Esopus valley before the Ashokan construction were largely paid by the city one half their lands value. During construction, three churches were built for workers: One protestant, one Catholic, and one “for coloreds”. Workers and their families created the largest village in the Catskills at the time with a population of 4,500. “Prostitution, cocaine, and drinking ran rampant.” Before the Esopus valley disappeared, the best trees were harvested, “graves disinterred, fences pulled down, barns burnt to the ground” and all structures removed. Bishop Falls then disappeared under the water. The New York Times soon wrote that the Ashokan Reservoir was the “greatest reservoir in the world.” The Hudson River Aqueduct to carry the water was seen as an engineering feat second to the Panama Canal. The water arrived at “the new Central Park reservoir.” The city owned not only the Ashokan reservoir but thousands of acres of forest buffer surrounding it. From 1914 to 1917, the city planted 3,000,000 evergreens around the reservoir. Then came the Roundout and Pepacton (the largest) Reservoirs. Photographers became fond of a new picturesque view, the Ashokan Reservoir waters with Slide Mountain rising up behind it.
Strangely, this book called “Making Mountains” has nothing at all to do with “making mountains”. Go figure. Still, it was a fun read, and I learned a lot about the area where I live.
February 26, 2015
This book argues that New York City and the Catskills negotiated the changes that took place in the Catskills economy and landscape during the nineteenth century. As Stradling says: “Despite this rural focus, the changes described here happened largely because of changes taking place at some distance, in the city.” New Yorkers came to the Catskills for various reasons but they often failed to recognize the gradual changes they were making in the countryside they saw as separate from the city (6).While it someways functions on the model of Cronon's idea of a metropolis with a [cultural] hinterland, it seems to be a bit more imperialistic rather than fully collaborative--NYC seems to have a disproportionate share of determining how the Catskills have been managed.
Tourism is key to understanding the relationship between the two--urban tourists looking to "reconnect" with "nature." Stradling is wise to pint out what has been coined “the devil’s bargain”—people experiencing nature created a preservation ethos and appreciation for nature while making the land weary with visits, camping, hiking, etc. Thomas Cole and other plein air landscape painters of the Hudson River Valley school immortalized the Catskills in their medium and the minds of the American conscience. Forests as symbols of stasis—seemingly “permanent and unchanging” (19).
In the end, Stardling's conclusion is measured and now somewhat common in environmental histories. The Catskills--the American Alps (Matterhorn)--are still culturally significant: locally, regionally, and nationally. It is a resilient place.
Tourism is key to understanding the relationship between the two--urban tourists looking to "reconnect" with "nature." Stradling is wise to pint out what has been coined “the devil’s bargain”—people experiencing nature created a preservation ethos and appreciation for nature while making the land weary with visits, camping, hiking, etc. Thomas Cole and other plein air landscape painters of the Hudson River Valley school immortalized the Catskills in their medium and the minds of the American conscience. Forests as symbols of stasis—seemingly “permanent and unchanging” (19).
In the end, Stardling's conclusion is measured and now somewhat common in environmental histories. The Catskills--the American Alps (Matterhorn)--are still culturally significant: locally, regionally, and nationally. It is a resilient place.
November 19, 2009
fascinating
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