Kaaterskill Falls
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Kaaterskill Falls from below |
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| Location | Catskill Mountains, New York, USA |
|---|---|
| Total height | 260 feet (79 m) |
| Height of Longest Drop | 240 feet (73 m) |
| Number of drops | 2 |
Kaaterskill Falls is a two-drop waterfall located near in the eastern Catskill Mountains of New York, on the north side of Kaaterskill Clove, between the hamlets of Haines Falls and Palenville in Greene County's Town of Hunter. The dual cascades total 260 feet (79 m) in height, making the falls the highest in New York.
The falls have long been a major attraction, despite access difficulties that persist to this day. In the 19th century they were a favorite subject for painters of the Hudson River School and inspired "Catterskill Falls", a poem by William Cullen Bryant.
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[edit] History
[edit] Geological formation
The falls, like the clove and creek with which they share a name, are a relatively recent addition to the Catskills in geologic time. They evolved through stream capture at the end of the Illinois glaciation, when runoff from the glacial melt that created North-South Lake began to flow away from the nearby headwaters of Schoharie Creek and down the steep slopes of the newly-created clove. The rushing waters of what would become known as Spruce Creek eroded a natural amphitheater at roughly 2,000 feet (609 m) on the south slope of South Mountain.[1]
Most of the drop is accounted for by the upper cascade. The shelf breaking the two falls (and creating the huge pool) is the break between the Manorkill Sandstone formed in the Middle Devonian period and the Oneonta-Genesee sandstone-shale mix of the late Devonian period.[2]
[edit] Human history
[edit] Colonial era
While it is likely the falls' existence was known prior to European colonization, it played no cultural role among the indigenous peoples of the Hudson Valley, who generally did not settle in the Catskills due to its limited agricultural possibilities and only ventured into the mountains to hunt game.
The falls' name, like that of the features around it, probably came from a later corruption of "Catskill" by English-speaking colonists who had supplanted the Dutch by the early 18th century.
Early American naturalist John Bartram and his son visited the falls on his famous 1753 expedition to the area. He wrote about it in "A Journey to Ye Cat Skill Mountains with Billy," one of the earliest Catskill travelogues, which became widely read not only in the colonies but back in Britain as well. He called it "the great gulf that swallowed all down" and estimated their height at approximately a hundred feet (31 m), in a somewhat hurried account. However, he may have written his patron Peter Collinson a more detailed version, and his son William may have included a sketch.[3]
[edit] Hudson River School
The falls' history as a tourist attraction began when Washington Irving mentioned them in his story "Rip Van Winkle":
| “ | At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such an opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a deep broad basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. | ” |
Pioneering Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole was drawn by this story, took a steamboat ride up the Hudson, stopping at West Point then going north to Catskill, NY where he ventured into Kaaterskill Clove in October of 1825 [1]. His canvases from that trip inspired a generation of artists for whom a trip to the Clove, Kaaterskill Falls and Charles Beach's Catskill Mountain House became something of a pilgrimage. The earliest known view of the Falls by Thomas Cole from 1826 is in the Westervelt Warner Museum in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.[2][3] Nearby Palenville, New York is considered to be the first art colony in the United States as a result (noted by Dr. Roland Van Zandt, author of The Catskill Mountain House.[specify] Other artists who painted the falls included Frederic Edwin Church, Sanford Gifford and John Frederick Kensett. Their work in turn helped attract affluent visitors to the Catskill Mountain House and the other hotels established near it later.
By far the best-known depiction of the falls is Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits (1849), a highly stylized rendition. It eulogized the recently deceased Thomas Cole by depicting him and William Cullen Bryant standing on Fawn's Leap looking out over a landscape that synthesized the falls and parts of the surrounding clove, including Haines Falls, into a landscape that, while visually striking, is not an accurate depiction of the falls. Prior to the painting's execution, in 1836, Bryant had complemented Cole's visualizations with versification when he wrote "Catterskill Falls", which described a wintertime encounter:
| “ | Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps, From cliffs where the wood-flower clings; All summer he moistens his verdant steeps, With the sweet light spray of the mountain-springs, And he shakes the woods on the mountain-side, When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide. But when, in the forest bare and old, The blast of December calls, He builds, in the starlight clear and cold, A palace of ice where his torrent falls, With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair, And pillars blue as the summer air. |
” |
The phenomenon he described — the erection of an ice column by the falls during particularly cold stretches of winter — was well known to frequent visitors.
At some time in the 19th century the falls were used as a mill to power a tannery. The Laurel House, a nearby hotel, acquired the water rights to Spruce Creek and dammed it during tourist season, charging spectators below the falls a fee to watch as the waters were unleashed and the falls "turned on".
[edit] Public ownership
In 1885 New York State established the Forest Peserve, which later became part of the New York State Constitution. The "forever wild" requirement helped protect the area from logging and commercial development, once the falls property came into state ownership during the early 20th century. They are today part of the North Mountain Wild Forest, a Forest Preserve Unit owned and managed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
The Laurel House was never rebuilt after a 1920s fire, and the Mountain House itself was razed by the State Conservation Department (the forerunner to DEC) in the early 1960s after having fallen into severe disrepair. The Falls and the surrounding area were prominently featured in a 2002 PBS documentary, "America's First River, Bill Moyers on the Hudson."[4]
[edit] Access
While the falls are on public land, they can only be reached via the Kaaterskill Falls Trail, a state-maintained yellow-blazed path running 0.4 mile (650 m) uphill from NY 23A, the only road through the clove. This has presented two safety issues.
First, the trail itself climbs rather steeply from the road, along the sometimes steep and rocky slopes alongside the creek. Challenging enough for experienced hikers, as the most-hiked trail in the Catskill Park it is used heavily by casual visitors who may be ill-prepared for the terrain between the road and the falls. The heavy traffic has compounded the trail's problems through erosion.
Second, the trail is served by two parking lots along 23A, both of which require a walk of at least 0.2 mile (400 m) to reach the trailhead at Bastion Falls, just above 23A at a bend in the road. Due to both the rugged surrounding terrain and the limitations placed on Forest Preserve land by the state constitution, New York's Department of Transportation (DOT) has been unable to expand the narrow shoulder on either side of the road, requiring that visitors walk very close to high-speed traffic, including trucks, some of which are in the middle of descending a pronounced grade. The risk of serious accidents is very high. Both DOT and DEC have indicated a willingness to sit down and work out a solution that will accommodate their concerns, however this has not happened as of 2006.
The issue has, in fact, been put on hold and temporarily mooted. In late June of 2006 heavy rains[4] pounded the area causing a mudslide to wipe out a section of Route 23A.[5] As of late November 2006, access to the Falls from below was reopened, though reconstruction of Route 23-A is scheduled to continue through the winter.
[edit] Safety issues
The Kaaterskill Falls Trail was built in 1967 as the southern terminus of the popular Escarpment Trail,[6] which runs along the ridge that bounds the Catskills to the northeast. In the late 1980s, DEC had to close the trail above the falls and build a new southern section along Schutt Road to limit the state's liability for injuries and fatalities that were occurring at the falls.[6]
Today, the trail officially ends, and is blocked off at, the lower of the two falls. However, the former treadway is still usable, and many visitors continue past the brush pile to get closer to the falls. Some venture into the natural amphitheater behind the falls, and it is here and from the ledge above the falls that more than one hiker has fallen to death.
The trail's junction with the current Escarpment Trail route just past the Laurel House site is also readily apparent due to the rock pile used to block it off and the wood pole that once held mileage signs. It, too, is still used unofficially to reach the falls.
[edit] Visibility
For those not able to get too close to it, the falls can be seen in their entirety in the distance from the northern approach to the summit of Kaaterskill High Peak, across the clove, and sometimes even from the fire tower on Hunter Mountain.
[edit] References
- ^ Titus, Robert; The Catskills: A Geological Guide; Purple Mountain Press, Fleischmanns, New York, 1993, ISBN 0-935796-40-1, 134-5, illustrated by Figure 6-2 at 137.
- ^ United States Geological Survey, Kaaterskill Falls at Geology of the New York City region; retrieved October 7, 2006.
- ^ Evers, Alf; The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock; Overlook Press; Woodstock, New York, ISBN 0-87951-162-1, 1982, 92.
- ^ Feuer, Alan; June 30, 2006; In Mid-Atlantic, Flooding's Fury Goes Downriver; The New York Times; retrieved October 8, 2006.
- ^ Wechsler, Alan; August 8, 2006; Summer sales washed away, Albany Times Union; retrieved October 8, 2006.
- ^ a b Kudish, Michael; The Catskill Forest: A History, ISBN 1-930098-02-2, 2000, Purple Mountain Press, Fleischmanns, New York, 136.
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