History, Natural History & the Arts
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers respond to search and rescue incidents throughout New York State locating and extracting lost, injured or distressed people and policing state lands.
This report of recent missions carried out by Forest Rangers was prepared by DEC: [Read more…] about Mt Marcy Skier, Catskills Peak-Bagger Rescued After All-Night Efforts
New York’s first known covered bridge was built in 1807. It crossed the Neversink River in the hamlet of Bridgeville located southeast of Monticello in the Sullivan County town of Thompson.
The Bridgeville Bridge was an important link in the Newburgh-Cochecton Turnpike, a toll road running from the Hudson River to the Delaware River that was incorporated by a legislative act on February 28, 1806 that was to include a “a good and sufficient bridge across the Neversink-river.” [Read more…] about Neversink & Delaware River Covered Bridges: Some History & Design Notes
Construction on the Delaware Aqueduct was begun in 1939 and it was put into service in 1944 when New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia opened a set of emergency gates to channel Rondout Creek into the newly constructed 85-mile-long water system.
Since then, the Aqueduct has delivered about half of New York City’s water supply — typically about 600 million gallons a day — using only gravity to carry the water from four reservoirs in the eastern Catskills. [Read more…] about Repair of Delaware Aqueduct, World’s Longest Tunnel; First Under Hudson River Since 1957
The following letter, “A Trip On The Delaware & Hudson Canal To Carbondale,” appeared in the Register of Pennsylvania on August 14, 1830 and was written in the city of New York on August 2, 1830. This letter was discovered and transcribed by George A. Thompson, a volunteer scholar at the Hudson River Maritime Museum, and slightly edited and annotated by John Warren.
Mr. Croswell – I perceive by the paper, that a packet boat commences this day, to run regularly for the remainder of the season, on the Delaware and Hudson canal. Among the pleasant and healthy tours that are now sought after, I would strongly recommend a trip on that canal. [Read more…] about An 1830 Trip On The Delaware & Hudson Canal
On a wintry walk in the woods, the glossy evergreen leaves and bright red berries of American Wintergreen make a pretty sight against fallen snow. Plentiful in the northern U.S. and Canada, the low-growing Gaultheria procumbens is known for the pungent aroma and mint-like taste of leaf and berry — pleasing but hard to define.
Native Americans used the leaves to treat pain and fever, and introduced colonists to the custom of drinking wintergreen tea. This “teaberry” carried them through the Revolutionary War, when British tea was scarce. [Read more…] about Wintergreen Oil: Local Employer to Bootlegger’s Subterfuge
On August 14, 2023, a Deerpark, Orange County resident entered pleas of not guilty in Deerpark Town Court to charges related to the illegal commercialization of trout.
The arraignment followed a months-long investigation stemming from a tip alleging the subject was selling trout by the Neversink River. [Read more…] about Illegal Commercialization of Trout Charges Filed
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced the release of the Draft Neversink River Unit Management Plan (UMP) for public comment. The plan guides the future uses and management of approximately 8,644 acres of DEC-managed public lands within the Neversink River Unit in the towns of Forestburgh and Mamakating in Sullivan County, and Highland and Wawarsing in Ulster County, NY. [Read more…] about Neversink River Management Plan Comments Sought
A few people sitting on the front porch of a Barryville home on the Delaware River last weekend learned firsthand what movie makers in the region discovered more than 100 years ago. There is a light that sweeps down the river valley shortly before dusk that is pure magic.
G.W. “Billy” Bitzer, the master cameraman who accompanied influential director D.W. Griffith to Cuddebackville, in western Orange County, NY, in the early part of the last century, dubbed it magic hour, and “the light Mr. Griffith waited for.” It brought Griffith and his crew back to the area year after year before he discovered the advantages of filming in California and became known as “the man who invented Hollywood.” [Read more…] about D.W. Griffith’s Orange County ‘Magic Hour’ Discovery
The Time and the Valleys Museum in the Catskills will host the program “The History of Wintoon, A Grand Neversink Estate” on Sunday, August 8th at 2 pm. [Read more…] about Neversink River’s Wintoon Estate
John Augustus Roebling celebrated two milestones in June of 1849, his 43rd birthday and the beginning of construction of the Neversink Aqueduct on the Delaware & Hudson Canal. It was the third of the four aqueducts he would design and build for the canal company, and followed the completion of the Delaware and Lackawaxen Aqueducts the previous year.
Roebling (his given name was actually Johann August) was born in Muhlhausen, in Prussia, on June 12, 1806, the youngest son of Christoph Polycarpa Roebling and Fredericke Dorothea Mueller Roebling. He grew up in a world of private tutors, learned the music of Bach and the poetry of Goethe, and according to some sources, built a model of a suspension bridge when he was nine years old that bore a striking resemblance to what would be his most famous work, the Brooklyn Bridge. He gained admission to the prestigious engineering program at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in Berlin, where he studied languages and philosophy as well as architecture, bridge construction and hydraulics. He graduated in 1826, and went to work for the state, as was the requirement at that time, serving three years building roads in Westphalia. [Read more…] about Roebling’s Wire Rope Modernized The D & H Canal
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