Catskill Mountains

Catskill Mountains
Range
Slide Mountain and the peaks around it as seen from Twin Mountain in the northern Catskills.
Country	United States
State	New York
Region	Hudson Valley
Counties	Ulster, Greene, Sullivan, Delaware, Schoharie
Borders on	Poconos, Shawangunk Ridge
Communities	Hunter, Tannersville, Monticello, Liberty
Highest point	Slide Mountain
- elevation	4,154 ft (1,266 m)
- coordinates	41°59′55″N 74°23′11″W
Length	111 mi (179 km), N/S
Width	102 mi (164 km), E/W
Area	15,259 km2 (5,892 sq mi)
Geology	Sedimentary
Period	Devonian, Mississippian
Map of the main regions of the northeast Appalachians, with the Catskills as "C".

The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau. They are sometimes considered an extension of the Appalachian Mountains into Upstate New York, although they are not geologically related. The Catskills are west of the Hudson River and lie within the bounds of six counties (Otsego, Delaware, Sullivan, Schoharie, Greene, and Ulster). The Catskill Mountains are also considered a physiographic section of the larger Appalachian Plateau province, which in turn is part of the larger Appalachian physiographic division. The mountains lie within the Allegheny Highlands forests ecoregion.

Geography

At the eastern end of the range the mountains begin quite dramatically with the Catskill Escarpment rising up suddenly from the Hudson Valley. The western boundary is far less certain, as the mountains gradually decline in height and grade into the rest of the Allegheny Plateau. Nor is there a consensus on where the Catskills end to the north or south, with it being certain only that by the time one reaches either I-88, the Delaware River or the Shawangunk Ridge that one is no longer in the Catskills.

In these peripheral regions, whether you are in the Catskills seems to be a matter of personal preference, as an old saying in the region seems to suggest — "When you have two rocks for every dirt, you are in the Catskills."

Many visitors, including owners of weekend or vacation homes in the region, seem to consider almost anything sufficiently rural west of the Hudson yet within a short drive of New York City to be in the Catskills.

The Poconos, to the immediate southwest in Pennsylvania, are technically a continuation of the Catskills under a different name. The Catskills contain more than thirty peaks above 3,500 feet and parts of six important rivers. The highest mountain, Slide Mountain in Ulster County, has an elevation of 4,180 feet (1,274 m).

Within the range is the Catskill Park, part of New York's Forest Preserve. Not all the land is publicly owned; about 60% remains in private hands, but new sections are added frequently. Most of the park and the preserve are within Ulster County; however Greene County accounts for a significant portion as well and there are areas in Sullivan and Delaware counties too.

Geology

Kaaterskill Falls on Spruce Creek near Palenville, New York. One of the higher falls in New York. Two separate falls total 260 ft (79 m)

The history of the Catskill Mountains is a geologic story come full circle, from erosion, deposition and uplift back to erosion. The Catskill Mountains are more of a dissected plateau than a series of mountain ranges. The sediments that make up the rocks in the Catskills were deposited when the ancient Acadian Mountains in the east were rising and subsequently eroding. The sediments traveled westward and formed a great delta into the sea that was in the area at that time.

The escarpment of the Catskill Mountains is near the former (landward) edge of this delta, as the sediments deposited in the northeastern areas along the escarpment were deposited above sea level by moving rivers and the Acadian Mountains were located roughly where the Taconics are located today (though significantly larger). The further west you travel, the finer the sediment that was deposited and thus the rocks change from gravel conglomerates to sandstones and shales. Even further west, these fresh water deposits intermingle with shallow marine sandstones and shales until the end in deeper water limestones.

The uplift and erosion of the Acadian Mountains was occurring during the Devonian and early Mississippian period (395 to 325 million years ago). Over that time, thousands of feet of these sediments built up, slowly moving the Devonian seashore further and further west. A meteor impact occurred in the shallow sea approximately 375 mya creating a 10 km (6 mi) diameter crater. This crater eventually filled with sediments and became Panther Mountain through the process of uplift and erosion.

By the middle of the Mississippian period, the uplift stopped and the Acadian Mountains had been eroded so much that sediments no longer flowed across the Catskill Delta.

Over time the sediments were buried by more sediments from other areas until the original Devonian and Mississippian sediments were deeply buried and slowly became solid rock. Then the entire area experienced uplift, which caused the sedimentary rocks to begin to erode. Today, those upper sedimentary rocks have been completely removed, allowing the Devonian and Mississippian rocks to be exposed. Today’s Catskills are a result of the continued erosion of these rocks, both by streams and in the recent past by glaciers.

Platte Clove, a break in the Escarpment created by glacial action.

Some traces of the most recent sedimentary layers remain for the discerning eye to discover, however. Even along the glacially-scoured eastern escarpment and in the upper Hudson Valley just below it—not to mention the glacial till-dumps and occasional terminal moraines of the southern-facing mountain slopes and valleys of the eastern and central Catskills—fragments of quartzite ranging from bright white, banded orange and tan, to deep red and dark gray are found. Many if not most of these are no more than 6" thick, have two flat sides and are without inclusions of other native rock, e.g., gray or blue sandstone ("bluestone"), most likely indicating the presence of a shallow, wave-beaten sandy delta or beach area at the base of the Acadian ranges in the delta's final stages of sedimentation. That sand layer, mostly free of silt (hence less opaque than older layers formed with higher concentrations of silt and mud under deeper water at more remote reaches of the delta) formed one or more upper layers of the delta. With compression and time, thin layers of sandstone formed of which only the here-mentioned fragments of sandstone remain now though in comparative abundance, if one measures their frequency against those of glacial erratics of similar size and shape which are typically metamorphic in origin (e.g., feldspars, granites, basalts), which most likely originated in the geologically complex region of the Adirondacks to the north. Such sandstones and erratics are frequently found collocated in cairns and other anomalous rock arrangements of the Eastern Catskills.

In successive Ice Ages, both valley and continental glaciers have widened the valleys and the notches of the Catskills and rounded the mountains. Grooves and scratches in exposed bedrock provides evidence of the great sheets of ice that once traversed through the region. Even today the erosion of the mountains continue, with the region’s rivers and streams deepening and widening the mountains’ valleys and cloves.

Transportation

From 1872, the Catskills were served by the Catskill Mountain Branch of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad (which was absorbed into the New York Central railroad in 1932). Passenger rail service continued until 1954. Part of the line still exists but now serves only freight.

New York State Route 28 serves road vehicle traffic from Interstate 87 at the western edge of Kingston. I-87 opened to road traffic in 1954.

Name

Views of the Catskills from the Hudson like this led to the name "Blue Mountains" for a time.

The name "Catskills" did not come into wide popular use for the mountains until the mid-19th century — in fact, that name was disparaged by purists as too plebeian, too reminiscent of the area's Dutch colonial past, especially since it was used by the local farming population. It may also have been a continuation of the British practice, after taking possession of the colony in the late 17th century, of trying to replace most Dutch Knickerbocker toponyms in present-day New York with their English alternatives. The locals preferred to call them the Blue Mountains, to harmonize with Vermont's Green Mountains and New Hampshire's White Mountains. It was only after Washington Irving's stories that Catskills won out over Blue Mountains, and several other competitors.

A 1656 map of New Netherland showing the locations of the Lands of the Kat Kills and the High Lands of the Esopus

Nicolaes Visscher II's 1656 map of New Netherland (left) located the 'Landt van Kats Kill' at the mouth of the Kats Kill (Catskill creek). The region to the south is identified as 'Hooge Landt van Esopus' (High Lands of the Esopus). This is a reference to a local band northern Lenape Native Americans who inhabited the banks of the Hudson and hunted in the high lands along the Esopus Creek).

While the meaning of the name ("cat creek" in Dutch) and the namer (early Dutch explorers) are settled matters, exactly how and why the area is named is a mystery. Mountain lions (catamounts) were known to have been in the area when the Dutch arrived in the 17th century.

The most common, and easiest, is that bobcats were seen near Catskill creek and the present-day village of Catskill, and the name followed from there. However there is no record of bobcats ever having been seen in significant numbers on the banks of the Hudson, and the name Catskill does not appear on paper until 1655, more than four decades later.

Other theories include:

• A corruption of kasteel, the Dutch sailors' term for the Indian stockades they saw on the riverbank. According to one Belgian authority, kat occurs in many place names throughout Flanders and has nothing to do with cats and everything to do with fortifications.^{[citation needed]}
• It was named for Dutch poet Jacob Cats, who was also known for his real estate prowess, profiting from speculation in lands reclaimed from the sea.
• A ship named The Cat had gone up the Hudson shortly before the name was first used. In nautical slang of the era, cat could also mean a piece of equipment, or a particular type of small vessel.
• It has also been suggested that it refers to lacrosse, which Dutch visitors had seen the Iroquois natives play. Kat can also refer to a tennis racket, which a lacrosse stick resembles, and the first place the Dutch saw this, further down the river in the present-day Town of Saugerties, they gave the name Kaatsbaan, for "tennis court," which is still on maps today.
• The Mohicans roamed the woods of New England during the 18th century. A Mohican tribe supposedly inhabited the area known as the Catskills today, led by a Mohican chief named Cat.
• When Europeans first arrived in the Catskills, a Native American fort was on the banks of the Catskill. In The Netherlands, the term “Kat” refers to a fortification.

The confusion over the exact origins of the name led over the years to variant spellings such as Kaatskill and Kaaterskill, both of which are also still used, the former in the regional magazine Kaatskill Life, the latter as the name of a town, creek, clove, mountain and waterfall.

The supposed Indian name for the range, Onteora or "land in the sky," was actually created by a white man in the mid-19th century to drum up business for a resort. It, too, persists today as the name of a school district and as the name of a Boy Scout summer camp.

In culture

October in the Catskills by Sanford Robinson Gifford.

The Catskills are famous in American cultural history for being the site of the so-called Borscht Belt, a Jewish resort area where many young Jewish stand-up comics got their start.

The Catskill mountains and their inhabitants play an important role in the stories My Side of the Mountain and its sequels by Jean Craighead George and in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear" & "Beyond the Wall of Sleep".

The town of Palenville located in the Catskills figures in Washington Irving's story as the home of "Rip Van Winkle".

The Catskills are mentioned in The Band's song "Time to Kill." The Band was also photographed there for their first album, Music from Big Pink The Band in the Catskills.

The Catskills are also mentioned in Beck's song "High Five (Rock the Catskills)" on his 1996 album Odelay.

Mercury Rev's song "Opus 40" on their 1998 album Deserter's Songs contains the line "Catskill mansions buried dreams/ I'm alive she cried but I don't know what it means". The band and their studios are based in the Catskills, and the area is often referred to in interview.

The Catskills are mentioned as well in Pela's song "Rooftops (Moth Song Outro)" on their 2007 album Anytown Graffiti.

Much of the frame story of Art Spiegelman's award-winning graphic novel Maus is set in the Catskills. Maus II is subtitled And Here My Troubles Began (From Mauschwitz to the Catskills and Beyond).

A Home Box Office miniseries is planned that will dramatize the a New York magazine article on natural gas drillers coming to the region. Richard Russo, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is writing a script for the project.

The town of Bethel, New York, located in the Catskills was home to the famous Woodstock Music festival in 1969

The 1973 novel Nickel Mountain: A Pastoral Novel by John Gardner takes place in the Catskill Mountains.

Films set, or filmed in, the Catskills

• UPDATED LIST of FILMS set in the Hudson Valley / Catskills Region: (kept up to date by the Hudson Valley Film Commission): [1]
• The Tears of Julian Po (1997) Christian Slater - filmed in Fleischmanns
• 99 Geiger Road [2] 2007 - Documentary about a bungalow colony of Holocaust survivors
• The Cake Eaters (2007)
• Casper Meets Wendy (1995) Wendy and her aunts run into Casper and his uncles at a resort in the Catskills.
• The Catskill Chainsaw Redemption (2004) A horror movie.
• The hit 1987 film Dirty Dancing was set in a Catskills resort in the summer of 1963 (though filmed at Mountain Lake in Virginia and at Lake Lure in North Carolina.)
• Four Seasons Documentary (2006 - in production) Follows the lives of Holocaust survivors in a Borscht Belt colony
• The Gig (1985) Director: Frank D. Gilroy, character study, amateur musicians get a gig.
• Goyband (2008) Dirty Dancing meets My Big Fat Greek Wedding with a touch of Fiddler on the Roof.^{[citation needed]}
• Having Wonderful Time (1938) Red Skelton's first movie, set in a Catskills hotel.
• Heavy (1995) An independent film starring Liv Tyler, Debbie Harry, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Shelley Winters, and Joe Grifasi was filmed partially in the southern Catskills in Barryville and Highland Lake.
• Kaaterskill Falls (2001) Award-winning independent film about a young urban couple befriending a local hitchhiker. Mountain country version of Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water. (Actually filmed in the Catskills.)
• Manny & Lo (1996)
• Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) Critically acclaimed film about a young woman who escapes from a cult in the Catskills.
• "My Side Of The Mountain" A young boy tests his survival skills by living about 2 years in the Catskill Mountains.
• Rip Van Winkle (1921) Silent film version of the classic story
• Stagedoor (2006) Documentary on life at a teen camp
• Sweet Lorraine (1987) story of an aging Catskill resort in its last days, filmed at the former Heiden Hotel in South Fallsburg.
• Taking Woodstock (2009) -- The story of how Elliot Tiber helped bring the Woodstock Festival to Bethel, New York.
• Magic, the 1978 film starring Anthony Hopkins is set in the Catskills.
• Tootsie (1982) - Features scenes in the "Hurley Mountain Inn" located in Ulster County.
• Parts of the movie Transamerica (2005) starring Felicity Huffman were filmed in Callicoon though in the movie it's referred to as Callicoon, Kentucky.
• A Walk on the Moon (1999) Set in Sullivan County, but filmed in Quebec, Canada.
• Part of the movie War of the Worlds was filmed in Athens at the foot of the Catskills (the burning train and ferry scene)
• WaterFall in the Catskills (1897, the Edison Studio)
• Wendigo (2001) Filmed in West Shokan and Phoenicia area. Starred Maureen Stapleton.
• Woodstock, a 1970 documentary about the Woodstock Festival of 1969, was filmed at the festival in Bethel.
• You Can Count on Me (2000) Award-winning independent film set in the village of Scottsville, in western New York near Rochester, but filmed in the Catskills, in and around Margaretville and Phoenicia.

See also

• Catskill Mountain fire towers
• Helderberg Escarpment

Further reading

• Heilprin, Angelo (1907). "The Catskill Mountains". Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 39 (4): 193–201. doi:10.2307/198709. ISSN 01905929. JSTOR 198709. http://books.google.com/?id=rGs9AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=The+Catskill+Mountains+Angelo+Heilprin#v=onepage&q=The%20Catskill%20Mountains%20Angelo%20Heilprin&f=false. 
• McIntosh, Robert P. (1962). "The forest cover of the Catskill Mountain region, New York, as indicated by land survey records". American Midland Naturalist 68 (2): 409–23. doi:10.2307/2422746. ISSN 00030031. JSTOR 2422746. 
• McIntosh, Robert P. (1972). "Forests of the Catskill Mountains, New York". Ecological Monographs 42 (2): 143–61. doi:10.2307/1942261. JSTOR 1942261. 
• McIntosh, R. P.; R. T. Hurley (1964). "The spruce-fir forests of the Catskill Mountains". Ecology 45 (2): 314–26. doi:10.2307/1933844. ISSN 00129658. JSTOR 1933844. 
• Rich, John Lyon (1906). "Local glaciation in the Catskill Mountains". The Journal of Geology 14 (2): 113–21. doi:10.1086/621285. ISSN 00221376. 
• Shepard, Paul (1957). "Paintings of the New England landscape: a scientist looks at their geomorphology". College Art Journal 17 (1): 30–43. doi:10.2307/773655. ISSN 15436322. JSTOR 773655. 
• Weathers, K. C.; G. M. Lovett, G. E. Likens, R. Lathrop (2000). "The effect of landscape features on deposition to Hunter Mountain, Catskill Mountains, New York". Ecological Applications 10 (2): 528–40. doi:10.1890/1051-0761(2000)010[0528:TEOLFO]2.0.CO;2. ISSN 10510761. 

External links

• Hiking Guide to Catskill High Peaks Catskill 3500 Club
• History of Catskill Mountains Sleepaway Camps
• Website for the Catskill Mountain Club hiking
• The Catskill Archive - History of the Catskill Mountains
• The Catskill Mountain Foundation
• The Catskill Center
• The Catskill Watershed Corporation
• Catskill Region Photo Gallery
• Catskill Mountainkeeper Protecting the Six Counties of the Catskills
• Catskill Mountain Businesses listed on Hudson Valley Directory