``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.
Fishing
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It's a natural hatchery for the fish having the Ashokan Reservoir down there. It lets these fish have a place they can go to grow up and just about have all the feed they want.
I am Hank Rope, Big Indian guide service. I guess I've been guiding here on the Esopus for 21 years now and I love it. This is the greatest place there is. If the fishing is off, so to speak, on the Esopus, 20 minutes later, you're on the East Branch. Twenty minutes in the other direction, you're on the Schoharie creek. That doesn't even count all of tributaries that come into the Esopus, and the little creeks here that are absolutely loaded with brook trout.
Little teeny brook trout, most people don't want to fish for them, they're only 4 to 5 inches, and they're a lot of fun to catch and they're beautiful, beautiful fish. I would say 99 and 9/10 of my customers are catch-and-release.
I refrain from letting a customer keep a rainbow. The rainbows are precious, and there are some beautiful rainbows in here. They're wild. If you catch a brown trout, it could be a hatchery fish, it could be a wild fish. But when you hook a rainbow, he or she is going to jump like crazy.
After three years here, they go down to the Ashokan Reservoir and they grow up, and instinct brings them back. I've had customers catch maybe 6 or 7, between 16 and 18 inches. The guy will come back the next week, and there will be nothing, because they are gone already. They're here in April, they drop their eggs, and then back down to the reservoir. Then again in July and August, you have 8, 9-inch ones and they're a heck of a lot of fun on a fly. The eggs were brought in from California in the 1880s, the early 1880s. And a few years later, the browns came.
When you catch a 16-inch brown trout, you got a nice fish. And if you're going to take your kids out for the day, I recommend two things. One is the little pond in Pine Hill, and the other one, Onteora Lake, right outside of Kingston. Great place to take a kid. Get an inexpensive rod, some worms, and the kid's going to catch a lot of little fish. I'm either working or fishing, I wear out a pair of wading shoes every season, 160 days a year, maybe. I don't think I ever want to leave here. The fishing's fantastic here. This is what it sounds like from my bedroom window. That's why I live here.
Arkville & Margaretville
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Jeff Senterman: So right now we are at the Erpf Center, which is the home to the Catskill Center. And we're in beautiful downtown Arkville, and right across from the railroad.
I'm Jeff Senterman. I'm the executive director of the Catskill Center. I have lived and worked in the Catskills for a number of years. The Catskill Center has been around since 1969, and our mission has always been to preserve and enrich the economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of the Catskills.
Something that is unique about the Erpf Center here in Arkville is that not only is it the home to The Catskill Center, and other non-profits, it also has the Erpf gallery, the Catskill Mountain Quilters Hall of Fame, and public resources like a visitor information and a little bookstore, so folks can stop in, enjoy the works of art that art that are up in the gallery, explore the Quilters Hall of Fame, pick up a guide book or a map, and then be on their way to explore the rest of the Catskills.
The most unique part of Arkville is that we are home to the Delaware and Ulster rail ride, and it takes you on a ride through multiple villages here, right through the heart of the central Catskills, and kind of gives you a feeling for what visitors back in the late 1800s experienced as they were coming into this area. You can be eating lunch or breakfast at our little caboose here in town, and you can hear the train whistle, and you can watch the train go by.
Arkville is also home to a couple different restaurants. We have a new distillery in town that's producing local Catskill spirits, and then just down the street in Margaretville, we have a number of Main Street businesses in a vibrant Main Street area that welcomes visitors and residents alike.
Margaretville is home to a number of interesting places to shop, a couple of great restaurants to choose from, there's information that's provided by the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce, with a little visitor center, so folks can get information. And there's a river walk. There's actually a trail that starts right in Margaretville and starts to climb a mountain, right from Main Street.
Another really interesting thing about Arkville and Margaretville is that we're home to the Catskill Recreation Center, which is a state-of-the-art recreation facility here in the central Catskills. It has a full Olympic-size swimming pool, it has a weight room, exercise equipment. And it was a wholly-driven non-profit exercise, developed to help the communities here, but it also had become an amazing resource for everybody surrounding this area, and for people that are visiting and that want to be able to work out while they're here.
The Erpf Center, along with the Catskill Center, and the Erpf gallery, and the Quilters Hall of Fame, and the visitors' shop, are all open to the public, Monday through Friday, from 9 to 5; and on Saturdays from 10 to 2.
