Catskill Park
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Catskill Park
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 View from Twin Mountain . |
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| location | Delaware County , Greene County , Sullivan County , Ulster County , New York (state) , United States | |
| Geographical location | 42 ° 5 ′ N , 74 ° 30 ′ W | |
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| Setup date | 1885 | |
| administration | Department of Environmental Conservation | |
Catskill Park is a state park in the Catskill Mountains of the US state of New York . It extends over land within a Blue Line in four counties: Delaware , Greene , Sullivan and Ulster Counties . The total area covers 700,000 acres (2800 km²). In 2005 287,514 acres (41% of the area) belonged to the state as part of the Forest Preserve . The park is managed by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Another 6% of the area belongs to the city of New York City as protected areas for the water reserves in the region and its catchment areas .
The species-rich fauna includes bobcat , mink , fishing marten and coyote . About 400 black bears populate the region. The state maintains numerous campsites and 300 mi (500 km) of trails. Hunting is allowed during the season and there are around 50,000 residents who maintain secondary apartments , mainly as holiday residents . More than half a million visitors come every year.
The park is protected by Article 14 of the State Constitution . There it is stipulated that all land that lies within the park boundary and belongs to the state or is acquired may never be sold or given up and must remain "forever wild".
Catskill is the smaller and lesser known of New York's two Forest Preserves . As a result, residents and supporters of the park often feel neglected by the state government in Albany . A popular phrase says that the DEC Commissioner's chair faces north ("the DEC Commissioner's chair faces north"), that is, to the Adirondacks . However, the DEC is trying to create other facts. Some key inventions for managing the Forest Preserves were made in the Catskills.
geography
The park extends from the easternmost point near the Hudson River , west of Kingston , to the east branch of the Delaware River at Hancock to the west. The northernmost point is at Windham and the southernmost point is between the village of Napanoch and the Rondout Reservoir . The Blue Line encloses a roughly heart-shaped area. For long stretches the borders follow drawing board lines, in the south the Roundout Reservoir and in the southwest the valley of the Beaverkill , in the northwest the valley of the Eastbranch Delaware River with the Pepacton Reservoir and in the north the valley of the Batavia Kill form natural borders. Some of the water protection areas of the reservoirs go beyond the Blue Line and in places create a connection to other protected areas. The areas are distributed among the counties as follows: Delaware 42,000 acre (169.97 km²), Greene 79,200 acre (320 km²), Sullivan 18,800 acre (76.08 km²) and Ulster 154,200 acre (624.02 km²). In contrast to Adirondack Park , Catskill Park does not cover the entire area of the Catskill Range . Nevertheless, all but two of the 35 Catskill High Peaks are within the Blue Line .
management
According to the master plan, the entire state land in the Catskills is divided into related management units in the categories: Wilderness , Wild Forest , Intensive Use Unit and Administrative Unit .
Wilderness
Wilderness is the most heavily protected zone. The wilderness areas must comprise at least 10,000 acres (40 km²) of contiguous areas. The land should remain "untrammeled by man" and as close as possible to the natural state. All motorized equipment is forbidden, paths are limited to a minimum and campsites should only be maintained to a minimal extent. Human influence should be avoided as much as possible. Above all, the summit regions and the primeval forests are located in wilderness areas . According to DEC policy, all peaks above 3,100 feet (944 m) are treated as de facto wilderness. The following areas currently exist: Big Indian Wilderness , Windham-blackhead Range Wilderness , Kaaterskill Wild Forest , Indian Head Wilderness , Hunter-west Kill Wilderness , Slide Mountain Wilderness .
Wild forest
The wild forests are also subject to the restrictions of Art. 14 , but differ from the wilderness areas mostly in that they are located in lower regions and include forests that were not so long ago used or exploited. Some of them were cut down before the state bought them. Therefore, on the one hand, a greater human influence is noticeable and, on the other hand, human uses are more permitted.
Vehicles, such as snowmobiles, are only allowed to travel in wild forest areas with the permission of the DEC. Cross-country skiing and sometimes mountain biking and hunting are also allowed. Some Wild Forest Units were forced to set up, for example , to make surrounding wilderness areas accessible, such as Overlook Mountain Wild Forest , which forms a corridor through the Indian Head Wilderness Area to allow access to the fire tower at Woodstock . A comparable solution is planned for the Hunter Mountain Fire Tower . The Halcott Mountain Wild Forest was declared a Wild Forest because the area is not the size required for a wilderness area . Wild Forest Areas are: Long Pond-Willowemoc in Sullivan County; Touch-Me-Not , Cherry Ridge-Campbell Mountain, and Dry Brook Ridge in Delaware Counties; Balsam Lake , Bluestone , Lundy , Peekamoose Valley , Phenicia-Mt. Tremper , Shandaken , Sundown in Ulster; Blackhead , Colgate Lake , Hunter Mountain , Kaaterskill , North Point , Windham High Peak Wild Forests , some of which have been combined in the new master plan: Elm Ridge Wild Forest , Halcott Mountain , Sundown Wild Forest , Bluestone Wild Forest , Vernooy Kill State Forest , Willowemoc Wild Forest , Balsam Lake Mountain Wild Forest , Dry Brook Ridge , Delaware Wild Forest , Cherry Ridge Wild Forest , Middle Mountain Wild Forest , Tomannex State Forest .
Intensive use units
With the exception of the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center, intensive use units are state campgrounds that are set up for permanent use. The campgrounds are generally much smaller and have different facilities. Sometimes they border directly on Wilderness or Wild Forest Areas. North-South Lake as an exception is a large area (New York's largest public campground) with several bathing beaches on both lakes, the former location of the Catskill Mountain House at Pine Orchard and many historic hiking trails in the area. Other campgrounds are Beaverkill , Devil's Tombstone , Kenneth L. Wilson , Mongaup Pond and Woodland Valley .
Administrative use units
Administrative use units are even smaller and usually unnamed parcels that are not advertised for use as forest preserves. Well-known are Vinegar Hill Wildlife Management Area , Simpson Ski Slope and the Catskill Mountain Fish Hatchery with the DeBruce Environmental Education Camp and Esopus Creek Fish and Wildlife Management Parcel .
There is also the Bear Spring Mountain Wildlife Management Area as well as water protection areas and private "resorts".
Beyond the park's boundaries, there are other wildlife sanctuaries nearby: Bearpen Mountain State Forest , Murphy Hill State Forest , Kerryville State Forest , Crystal Lake Wild Forest , Witch's Hole State Forest , Wurtsboro Ridge State Forest , Roosa Gap State Forest , Shawangunk Ridge State Forest , Shawangunk Grasslands National Wildlife Refuge , wosting reserve , Bear Hill Preserve Minnewaska State Park Preserve .
The lowest areas of the park are in the southeast near the Hudson River on Saw Kill ( Saw Kill ) on the Blue Line in Kingston , where the terrain to about 37 m (120 ft) above sea level drops.
geology
The highest mountain is Slide Mountain ( Slide Mountain ) in the Shandaken area at 1274 m (4180 ft) altitude. The Catskill Range consists primarily of sedimentary rocks, limestones and sandstones that were formed in the Devonian Age .
Waters
The waters belong to the two river systems of the Delaware River and the Hudson River . Well-known rivers are Esopus Creek , Neversink River , Rondout Creek , Schoharie Creek .
history
The area was the habitat of the Mohawk who had their hunting grounds there. Later raw materials and natural resources were exploited by the Dutch , English , Irish and Germans . Local business operated Bluestone - quarries , tanneries , crop of Wintergreen and Blueberrys , as well as trapping, fishing and later tourism. The primary forests of hemlock and Northern Hardwood Forests on the steep mountain slopes and secluded valleys were inaccessible enough to deforestation, the extraction of tannins escaped and the coal industry in the 18th and 19th century. The park has an important role in protecting New York City's water resources, but it was established thirty years before the first water reservoir ( Ashokan Reservoir ) was built. At that time the city met its water needs from other sources.
In 1885, when the state legislature was debating the Adirondack Park Bill, Ulster County sought overdue payments of property taxes that the county owed the state under a bill passed six years earlier against opposition from its officials. The country especially around Slide Mountain had passed into the possession of the county, as a lumberjack, the tannin for tanning from the hemlock wanted to win, cut the trees and made their money, however, moved on to pay taxes without the County.
What was left behind, provided it was of good quality, was hawked as private hunting or fishing grounds to wealthy businessmen from the big cities, whose self-assured violation of hunting rights and poaching caused the resentment of the local population, who were used to the fact that the land gave them their basic needs delivered. The less valuable pieces of land continued to be devastated so that they produced nothing but devastating fires.
A team of forestry experts led by Harvard Professor Charles Sprague Sargent had surveyed the region when the Forest Preserve Bill was in process and had spoken out against the inclusion of the Catskills in protected status, as its forests only "protected waters of local importance" to the Adirondacks however, had the public interest on their side, because some of the state's businessmen had a great interest in keeping the Erie Canal from silting up.
At the same time, Ulster had lost a lawsuit against the state and had been asked to repay taxes. However, two county assemblymen (one of them Cornelius Hardenbergh , a descendant of Johannes Hardenbergh , the original royal fiefdom in much of the 1708 Catskills), elected for their firm stance against tax refunds, lobbied their peers to do so to approve an alternate version of the Forest Preserve Act that not only settled all of the county's tax debts, but also determined that the state would assume all property taxes in the future. This addition was later adopted for the Adirondacks and continues to this day. It usually decides on the solvency of the communities and corporations in both parks.
When New York passed a new constitution in 1894, the original lobbyists for the park seized the opportunity to embed the law in that document and plug any loopholes that loggers and officials on the Forest Preserve Advisory Board had used to continue circumventing the protective laws. The resulting Article 14 has survived several other drastic constitutional revisions.
The "Blue Line"
The creation of the park also meant that government resources in the area were tightening. First came fire protection, a facility that was most welcome to the communities, and also a facility that would have a long-lasting impact on the region because fire watchtowers were erected on a series of peaks and patrols regularly ran along the railway lines to avoid flying sparks fight them before they spread.
The protection status also changed the perception of the region as a tourist area. An era began which was dominated by hotels like the Catskill Mountain House on North-South Lake ; Hotels that catered for the rich and famous and at the same time brought the leisure activities of fly fishing in trout streams , hunting and hiking closer to the outdoor recreationists ( those looking for relaxation in nature) .
In 1892 the state invested $ 250 to build a trail on Slide Mountain after Arnold Henry Guyot recently proved it was the highest peak in the mountains. This drew a great deal of tourist interest and it was the first publicly funded trail laid out in New York's Forest Preserves . To this day it is the most used hiking trail in the Catskills.
The park's northern boundary was also established that same year when the state decided to focus its land acquisitions on specific parishes, marked by a line in blue ink around the parish area, a custom that continues to this day in all official state Maps continues.
Twelve years later, in 1904, it was decided to do the same in the Catskills. This Blue Line but did not go by the municipal boundaries, but fell back on the old Hardenbergh Patent Survey lots , waterways and railways - rights of way , which was a clear defined area. This gave the communities in the area more planning security. A similar practice was then introduced in the Adirondacks and future park expansions followed this model.
In 1912 the law was changed again so that the park extended to "all lands" (all parcels) within the Blue Line, including private land.
The reservoirs
Soon after, a new paragraph was in Article 14 inserted, which allowed the reservoir set (reservoirs) to three percent of the land area in the park, so Sargent's devaluation of the hydrological resources of the Catskills was refuted.
New York City reached its present form in 1898 and began searching for new water resources the following year. The previous system of reservoirs in the metropolitan area and Westchester County was no longer adequate. The city first looked for areas in Rockland County (now part of Harriman State Park ), but discovered that a group of speculators in the Ramapo Water Company had already acquired the water rights. So it became necessary to look for springs further north and only in Catskill Park was a suitable area on Esopus Creek to be found on which the Ashokan Reservoir was formed.
In 1905 the state created Water Supply Commissions at various administrative levels including the top state level. As a result, the rapidly escalating conflicts could be resolved, which had developed among other things around the plans of the state to expropriate land in the Catskills in order to build the two reservoirs Ashokan and Schoharie Reservoir , as well as the Shandaken Tunnel .
The city was successful and construction of the Ashokan Reservoir began the following year. Several small hamlets and many landowners had to give way. However, some settlements, such as Shokan , West Shokan, and Olive Bridge , still exist today. The Esopus was dammed in 1913 and two years later was able to deliver the first water into the city. The court settlement of land claims lasted until 1940.
Mid 20th century
The resulting model existed, more or less, for the next 50 years. Within the Blue Line , the state acquired land (through the State Parks Council and later the Conservation Department ) and, when time and resources permitted, built paths, huts (lean-tos), and watchtowers, unrelated to any major plan and often without coordination or insight into the measures taken by other government agencies.
However, important steps have been taken. Government bonds passed by the electorate in 1916 and 1924 raised $ 12.5 million. and brought the acquisition of an additional 121,000 acres (490 km²) to state property. The Great Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s made many plots available at low prices, and under the aggressive Robert Moses running the state parks, valuable areas such as Devil's Path Range , the summit of Slide Mountain and Windham High Peak became part of the forest Preserve .
From 1926 to 1931 the first four state campgrounds were built in the park.
During the Great Depression , New Deal policies created labor supply programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps . In this course, paths were laid out and areas reforested. The state Conservation Commission published the first booklets on the "Catskill Trails".
However, the hiking trails quickly fell into disrepair and were hardly used. Raymond H. Torrey wrote at the end of the decade that hikers saw the Catskills as a thing of the past and preferred to head for the Adirondacks and higher peaks in northern New England . In contrast to these regions, hiking or leisure organizations never formed for the Catskills, which meant that the park also lacked a support forum. A Catskill Mountain Club was formed in the late 1920s, but it split up after two years. The New York - New Jersey Trail Conference now maintains most of the trails in Catskill Park and around Slide Mountain .
The most important change during this period was the adaptation of Art. 14 in 1948, which enabled the construction of the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center and attracted skiers after the Whiteface and Gore Ski Area were built in the Adirondacks . The ski area still exists today and as a result several private ski areas such as Hunter Mountain and Windham Mountain were created .
The construction of Interstate 87 ( New York State Thruway ) along the Hudson Valley and the upgrading of Route 17 as a freeway along the southwestern borders of the park allowed for better access during the 1950s and 60s, although Route 17 was heavily fought by trout fishermen because some of the originally planned bridges on Beaver Kill would have destroyed particularly good fishing spots.
New York City built three more reservoirs partially on park grounds: Neversink , Rondout, and Pepacton Reservoir .
In 1957 the Blue Line had finally reached the size it still has today. It now includes areas right up to the city limits of Kingston and the Thruway to the east and larger areas of Sullivan and Delaware Counties to the west.
In 1966 the Catskill Mountain 3500 Club was founded, a summit gathering club that had existed informally for several years. This was the first organization that can be seen as the mouthpiece of a catskill hiking community . For many years it remained the only such organization with a focus on "catskills".
Three years later, in 1969, the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development was founded, an organization that at least partially took over the function for the Catskills that the venerable Adirondack Council and Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks had assumed for the park in the north.
The Temporary Commission and the Master Plan
The situation changed again at the beginning of the 1970s. The era of the Borscht Belt ended when restrictions on Jewish guests at other hotels and resorts were lifted by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and younger generations of Jews felt better integrated than their parents and grandparents.
In the wake of the Woodstock Festival , many younger people followed the call to "get ourselves back to the garden" and the Catskills were one of the areas whose campsites and paths deal with backpackers and "counter-culture." "Enthusiasts filled. Paths that had almost disappeared a decade earlier were suddenly being used intensively.
On Earth Day 1970, Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed a bill that took up growing environmental concerns by linking the Conservation Department , which previously administered the Catskills and the Adirondacks, with several other offices, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which still manages the Forest Preserve to this day .
An idea that the Catskill Center had long championed became a reality in 1973 when the state set up a Temporary Commission to Study the Future of the Catskills . This commission was not limited to the areas within the Blue Line, but included all areas that can be counted as part of the Catskill region. This included all four counties in the park, plus Schoharie County , Otsego County, and two cities in the southwest corner of Albany County . For the first time, the park's resources have been assessed by the state.
There was some unrest in the area when the Adirondack Commission recommended the establishment of a comprehensive land-use agency , which the Adirondack Park Agency had already fully implemented. In the region, however, this led to great anger because the Agency interpreted the zoning regulations much more strictly than the cities had previously done, and mock wars were waged against long-term residents for relatively minor violations. The residents of the Catskills feared that they would expect similar conditions.
When the commission examined the same proposals for the Catskills, it ultimately decided against it in its 1975 final report. However, she recommended creating a master plan for the state ownership of the Forest Preserve , which was all the more important since the administration was (until today) divided into two different regions.
She also recommended, following a trend in public land management - and the recommendation of a legislative committee in the 1960s - that at least four of the growing plots ("management units") of the Forest Preserve should be formally declared Wilderness Areas or Wild Forests . This distinction, too, had already proven itself in the Adirondacks. The Wilderness Areas corresponded to the US Wilderness Areas of the federal government, as they had already been established in the national parks and United States National Forests in the west, but with slightly fewer restrictions; the wild forests are an even more open category, unique to New York's Forest Preserves , where more human activity is allowed.
A master plan was developed and started in the early 1980s. The DEC dealt in detail with which target groups should be allowed on which routes (hikers, snowmobilers, riders, cross-country ski runners, etc.) and marked the paths accordingly.
The 1990s
Another innovation from the Adirondacks, which the supporters of the Catskills wanted to copy, was the establishment of an Interpretive Center , which is to serve as an information center for visitors and a contact point for regional tourism. This project began in batches under the direction of Governor Mario Cuomo . A location was found on Route 28 near the hamlet of Mount Tremper . There was cleared and roads were built to make the future building accessible. The Palisades Interstate Park Commission was hired to operate (to circumvent the restrictions of Art. 14) and the New York – New Jersey Trail Conference planned to run the route of the Long Path past it.
In 1995, however, a new governor, George Pataki , took over the office and after some deliberation, due to financial considerations, decided to postpone the project so that it is not yet in place. The site, known by the locals as the "road to nowhere", is still looked after, but there are no offers other than a place to picnic and a short nature trail.
Completion of the project was a cornerstone of the 1999 Public Access Plan , which in turn was designed in the imitation of the Adirondacks and made suggestions for improving public awareness of the park's natural resources. Only a few of these suggestions were implemented, such as improvements to the trail network (e.g. a connecting trail over Mill Brook Ridge , which completed the Finger Lakes Trail and the hiking trail network around the lower peaks in the Delaware County section with the long-established hiking trail network in Ulster and Greene Counties Association).
In 1999, Pataki declared most of the Catskill High Peaks' peaks as Bird Conservation Areas in recognition of their significant boreal coniferous forests as summer habitats for the Bicknell's Thrush , which had recently been recognized as a species in its own right. This was the first such marking in the Forest Preserve and this time it was the Adirondacks who later followed suit.
present
In 2003, the DEC published their long-awaited revised new edition of the Master Plan . In the new plan, several wild forests have been converted into wilderness areas and further rules for the use of the wilderness areas , such as a restriction on group sizes.
The most contested aspect, however, was the restriction of mountain biking to certain trails and a ban on the wilderness areas . While this had already been done in all other locations, it was heavily challenged by mountain bikers and their lobbying organizations.
The revised master plan was only approved in August 2008.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Geographic Names Information System . United States Geological Survey.
- ↑ Map of the park area
- ↑ "guard only streams of local influence,"
- ↑ catskillinterpretivecenter.org
Web links
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Catskill Day Hikes for All Seasons
Carol and Dave White cover 60 hikes throughout the Catskills. Difficulty rating, distances and directions to trail heads. ADK, Inc. 2002, 1st edition. - Catskill Mountain Guide Peter W. Kick, AMC Books. 2009, 2nd edition.
- Catskill Park State Land Master Plan .
- Catskill Water Discovery Center.
- Hiking Guide to the Catskill High Peaks Catskill 3500 Club
- The Catskill Center for Conservation and Development
- Catskill Forest Preserve
- Online Guide to the Catskill Mountains
- The Catskill Archive. History of the Catskill Mountains.
- New York Department of Environmental Conservation .
- Catskill information
- Catskill Park Photo Gallery
- Slide Mountain Wilderness
- Catskill Mountainkeeper Protecting the Six Counties of the Catskills
- NY-NJTC: Catskill Park Trail Details and Info