``I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.`` — John Burroughs
About This Tour
As you embark on the Catskill Mountains Scenic Byway driving tour, take in the sweeping mountain views and charming small towns as you hear stories of the history, landscape, and culture of the Catskill region from the people that call it home.
This tour is presented by the Catskill Center, a nonprofit organization that has been committed to preserving and enriching the economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of the Catskills since 1969.
Sample Stories
For more content, click the "Explore this Tour Remotely" button below.
Ashokan Reservoir
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In Shokan turn on to Reservoir Road, for a firsthand glance of New York City's water supply. Continue across the bridge dividing the Ashokan Reservoir for panoramic views of a Catskills Shandaken range. This road continues to the Route 28-A loop, where you can park on either side of the dam, to walk or bike a 2-mile scenic promenade. No one knows the story of New York's reservoirs like Diane Galusha - communications director and education coordinator at the Catskill Watershed Corporation. We hiked with her along Birch Creek in the Shandaken Wild Forest.
Diane Galusha: This stream makes its way to the Esopus Creek, and the Esopus Creek is what was dammed to create the Ashokan reservoir. So this water, assuming it isn't drunk by a deer or a porcupine and isn't evaporated, eventually gets to New York City. Our task really is basically to keep New York's water clean. We are the stewards of the water for half of New York state's population. New York gets about 1.2 billion gallons of water a day, about a billion gallons or so from the Catskills. New York City's water supply is the largest unfiltered water supply in the country. There are a few others, but this is by far the biggest.
The story of New York City's Catskill water supply goes back to the turn of the 20th century, when 26 entire communities were displaced to make way for a network of reservoirs.
Diane Galusha: For the most part, all of the homes and the barns and the businesses and the churches and schools and the community centers were destroyed. They basically removed all traces of habitation, and all traces of vegetation. They cut down all the trees and a couple inches of the ground; filled in all the foundations and the privy holes and all that, and created something of a wasteland before they opened the gates of these cofferdams and let the water rise and cover the sites of those communities which really are kind of ghost towns beneath the waters now.
The early reservoirs were built largely by immigrants. Those immigrants were housed in large labor camps. Incredibly tedious, incredibly labor intensive, and incredibly dangerous. Many people died, people lost limbs.
This water that we're sitting next to is eventually going to be coming out of somebody's kitchen faucet. It's getting there strictly by gravity. This took a lot of thought, foresight, a lot of incredible engineering, by a lot of very brilliant people, and a lot of very hard work. And lives from many, many workers over generations. There are a lot of people that we owe thanks to who gave up a lot so that New York City could have water.
Catskill Interpretive Center
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Plan to stop in at the Maurice D. Hinchey Catskill Interpretive Center, on 62 acres, with access to hiking trails, including an ADA-accessible loop. Whether you're planning on hitting the trails, exploring the towns, or just taking in the scenery, take advantage of the interpretive center's resources to help map out your Catskills adventure. We took a hike with Bill Rudge, a natural resources supervisor for New York state's Department of Environmental Conservation.
Bill Rudge: The Catskill Forest Preserve is the public-owned land within the Catskills, created in 1885 in large part in reaction to the heavy forest cutting that was taking place throughout the state, for a variety of reasons, including the Civil War, which created this tremendous demand for leather. And the process to create leather involves two critical elements and that's the hide of wild animals, and tannin, which is used to tan those hides.
So the Catskills had this tremendous resource in terms of tannin, because the Catskills are heavily forested by hemlock trees. The hemlock bark is rich in tannin. The state of New York slowly progressed with conserving lands of about 700,000 acres, which is a mix of public and private land. And that line was shown on maps as a blue line, and it's now become the blue line of the Catskill Park.
The state of New York owns almost half the land within the Catskill Park, and those lands we manage as the forest preserve. By far, the largest classifications are the wilderness and wild forest. So wilderness is intended to be a place where someone can go and recreate where the presence of man is essentially not apparent. So you can't use a chainsaw in wilderness. You can't drive your car into a wilderness area. We don't allow snowmobiles or ATVs in wilderness. We allow hunting, hiking, trapping, fishing, camping, and wildlife observation. We have about 35 peaks above 3,500 feet in elevation, and a significant number of those peaks are trail-less. And that trail-less experience is one of the things we're trying to provide in wilderness areas.
In wild forest, those lands are managed for a greater variety of recreational opportunities, and we can designate and mark snowmobile trails in wild forest. We have mountain bike trails in wild forest and we have a little more extensive horseback riding trail system in wild forest, and of course, hiking, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing are all allowable uses, as well as hunting and fishing.
