Community Heritage In New York City's Watershed

With their depiction as rolling, forested, glorious mountains with steep peaks cut through by long rivers and inhabited by buzzing wildlife, the Catskills were home to America's love of the wilderness and romantic ideas of nature. Created and reinforced in the 19th century by Hudson River School artists, these mountains became the pinnacle of beauty that wild and uninhibited nature could hold (Cronon 2007, X). New York artists’, writers’, and intellectuals' descriptions and presence drew NYC tourists who flocked to the Catskills as a retreat from the busy and polluted city life, starting a special relationship between New York City and its rural mountainous counterpart 200 km away (Stradling 2007, 13). In part, this relationship and idealized view of the Catskills is still present with travel brochures depicting the mountains as mainly an uninhabited natural oasis.

Over the past 150 years, this relationship between New York City and the Catskills became even more complicated as the Catskills' water would be captured, held back, and become New York city's property. As water demand increased on Manhattan island, the city turned to the Catskills, who, thanks to the intellectuals', artists’, and writers' descriptions of the mountains had the reputation of having pristine drinking water (Stradling 2007, 141). This water would become New York City's "champagne of tap water" through what the government considered a "marvel of modern engineering" (Beling 2022; DEP 2017). As seen in the plaque describing the Ashokan reservoir, the image of the Catskills and the reservoirs that NYC presents is the story of an engineering masterpiece that benefits millions of people by providing unfiltered water through aqueducts that run on gravity alone.

These two images of the Catskills, one of a beautiful uninhabited wilderness and another of an engineering masterpiece are not mutually exclusive. Rather, since the reservoir gives the impression that it is a natural lake in the mountains it also encourages the idea of the uninhabited Catskills. What is not told in either of these images is that the construction of just 7 of these reservoirs alone destroyed at minimum, 17 villages, displaced 4464 people, removed 8093 bodies from 57 cemeteries, and discontinued 179 mi (287.4 km) of the highway, effectively uprooting and isolating many local communities (Beisaw 2016, 617). There was undoubtedly more damage done and the only official visible cultural symbols that speak to the vast networks of communities, villages, businesses, and homes that were once there are the former site signs scattered throughout the reservoirs. However, even these signs tend to present an inaccurate history with the former site sign of the Neversink being about 800m from the location of the previous town.

However, these former site signs are not the only artifacts of the land’s history; rather, an archaeological survey of city-owned watershed lands reveals ruins that, through community heritage, can be re-contextualized to tell the story of the rural residents whose lives were uprooted.

By the 1800s, New York City had polluted their only access to fresh water on Manhattan Island and had to look elsewhere for clean drinking water (Koeppel 2000, 13–15). Construction of the Croton Dam began in 1837 but demand soon outpaced supply with the city’s water consumption growing from 12 million gallons to 183 million gallons per day between the years 1842 to 1894 (Finnegan 1997, 595). The city then turned to the Catskills to fulfill their needs. 

In 1905, the Ashokan Dam was the first to be built. Because of the ever-growing need for water, the city also introduced the Delaware River Valley into their network of watersheds. Today, the Delaware, Catskills, and Croton hold 555 billion gallons of water and transport over one billion gallons to city residents every day (Beisaw 2016, 617).

Community Impacts

This history of New York City Water systems above is what is told by city-approved plaques at the reservoirs and on the department of recreation's website. To find the stories of the villages submerged and the displaced people, one must turn to alternative sources. These are often local community centers such as the Time and Valleys Museum and Olive Free Library that hold local residents' memories and histories.

As mentioned above, before reservoir construction, much of the Catskills served as a popular tourist destination for city-goers and an agricultural area. Networks of railroads connected the Hudson River to the mountains, with prosperous towns springing up along the tracks. To build the reservoirs, though, these towns were destroyed as residents were paid to burn their own houses, dig up their family members from cemeteries, and were paid only half of their land's assessed value (Beisaw 2016, 617-618).

After the construction of reservoirs, some areas such as the land around the Ashokan transformed into a suburban development (Beisaw 2016, 618). This increase in population made the area more polluted, so the city created a plan to reduce pollution through new land-use rules, educational programs, and acquiring 55,000 ac (143,664 ha) of watershed lands to reduce water supply contamination from septic and sewage discharge, road grease and oil, and lawn biocides, pesticides, and fertilizers (Beisaw 2016, 618). As Dr. April Beisaw argues, while trying to stop the pollution is a positive endeavor, this initiative once again forgets the historical context of the lands surrounding the reservoir. The land around the reservoirs are not "vacant lands" but "cultural places needing interpretation" (Beisaw 2016, 618).

While statistics and maps can tell the number of lives transformed and how much the landscape changed, they can not speak to the loss of life and community that took place with the construction of the reservoirs that still affect residents today. What can help fill in the gaps in knowledge and help interpret these cultural landscapes is community heritage archaeology performed through hiking the lands with residents. The best way to learn and tell the stories of the ruins of building foundations, cisterns, stonewalls, agricultural fields, animal pens, pastures, and discontinued roadways that scatter the landscape is to hear their histories firsthand.

In 1931, Clyde Winchell, whose family were long-time residents of Shokan, published in published Kingston Daily Freeman an account of him exploring the ruins in the Old Shokan district with fellow Shokanites. The newspaper described Winchell's hike as:

"time spent poking about amongst the foundation of its now demolished buildings like a journey into the past, with mental pictures of faces and familiar haunts springing up at every turn" (Winchell 1931, 3-4).

This description of Winchell's hike inspired our archaeological survey of the region, with the main goal of the hikes being to use ruins as stepping stones that could spur memories and stories of the region from locals.

We attempted to interpret these lands through community hikes of the Neversink, Rondout, and Ashokan reservoirs. Organized through Professor Beisaw's contacts as well as the local community centers of the Time and Thee Valleys Museum and Olive Free Library, volunteers could sign up to hike various parts of the reservoir's lands to reveal or learn the stories of loss, struggle, and survival the local families faced. By overlaying modern topographic maps with the latest map before dam construction, a research assistant mapped the buildings' foundations and other features such as schools, churches, and cemeteries that would have been submerged or on adjacent lands. This is then cross-referenced with the 1867 Frederick Beers' Atlas maps to determine whose properties they could have been. These points are uploaded to GPS devices that are taken out into the field and used as destinations.

However, this was not a concrete process; these possible points simply acted as springboards in which community members who either lived at the time their homes were taken or remembered their family stories could tell us more information or take us to local ruins they remember. By centering local knowledge, we were not only able to find the official names of many of the ruins' land owners, but also their personal histories and lives.

Throughout the hikes, we rediscovered ruins from foundations, cisterns, stonewalls, agricultural fields, animal pens, pastures, and abandoned roadways.

In many of these foundations, we found surface-level artifact scatters, including glass bottles and metal cans that often dated to the late 1800s when these buildings were last in use or to dumping grounds of the 1920s-1940s, during which the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) took most of the lands (Beisaw 2016, 620-622).

In addition to these physical remnants of the former life in the reservoir communities, we also discovered ruins and evidence of life in the natural landscape. We found an old apple orchard, which similar ones used to host evening festivals, old sandboxes and climbing trees where local children used to play, and an area that used to be a lake for ice skating. These in-between outdoor places that are not marked on maps served important roles in facilitating a feeling of community among the locals. They were places in which the physical land and being outdoors acted as a foundation to build relationships among townspeople. And unlike the ruins marked by definite points or spaces on maps, these critical spaces that were often the center of community building before the technology existed would have been lost to time if history was written by only official documentation.

As was mentioned earlier, we found various surface-level artifacts at all of the reservoirs. We did not dig for or collect the artifacts - we found them laying on the ground surface and left them where we found them so that they can continually be used as evidence of what was sacrificed in order to create the water system. At the Ashokan Reservoir, some of the more interesting artifacts we found were an ironstone lid, a chemical works bottle, and a telephone wire insulator.

At the Rondout Reservoir, we didn’t find too many artifacts, but we did find an old hinge to a barn door, and through looking at the shape of the rusted nail that was still attached to the hinge, Dr. Biesaw was able to date the nail and determine that it was manufactured post-Civil War.

The most memorable artifacts we found out of all of our hikes was during our hike at the Neversink Reservoir. These artifacts were located at a foundation we found that belonged to a man named Matthew Countryman. He lived with his wife and 5 kids, was a farmer, and owned his own farm. The foundation may have been an outbuilding or a house attached to the farm. The artifacts we found there include a wine bottle, a tobacco snuff lid, porcelain, an earthenware lid, a patented inkwell bottle, and various other objects.

These artifacts, all of which were from the late 1800s, are all meaningful and important. But when we think about how much these artifacts can truly tell us about Matthew Countryman, his family, and their life in Neversink, we realize that it can tell us only so much.

Artifacts, and ruins, can and do tell us part of a story, but not all of it. In order to fill in those gaps and really bring a story, a person, or a place (back) to life, we have to hear stories and memories firsthand and directly from the community they come from.

On our hike at Neversink, we were joined by community member John Nielson, who lived in the town of Neversink in the 1950’s as a young child. He guided us through the woods, and showed us places and spots that weren’t on our maps or in our research, yet were still important to him and integral to community life.

At one point during the hike, John showed us a tree that had a short metal pole sticking out of it, and told us this tree used to be the “milk tree.” The local milkman would hang bottles of milk from the pole, and John and other people in the neighborhood would go and pick up the bottles from there. Had John not been hiking with us though, we wouldn't have known exactly what that tree was used for. While we definitely could have surmised it was used for something because of the metal pole, we wouldn't at all have been able to reach the conclusion that this tree was the “milk tree” for the neighborhood.

We had a similar experience during our hike at the Ashokan Reservoir. There, we were joined by Olive resident Janette Kahil. Janette’s maternal family came to Olive in 1790, and she is the third generation to live in the town after the reservoir was built. Janette’s grandfather, Martin Eckert, who lived from 1876-1971, would tell her stories about life before the reservoir, and about how the reservoir changed the town and the lives of its residents. She has also spent a lot of time researching the town of Olive and the reservoir, and has combed through so many old records, documentations, and photographs. All around, Janette is extremely knowledgeable about the reservoir, and has a vast amount of both first-hand and second-hand knowledge. 

It was this knowledge that helped guide us through the woods and helped us find and document more “in-between places,” just like at Neversink. One “in-between” place Janette showed us was this area of the woods that used to be a lake where local children would ice skate during the winter. Again, this wasn’t on any of our maps, but was still very important to the community. It was a place where children gathered to play, laugh, and make childhood memories that surely stayed with them as they grew up.

Janette also showed us another spot that was pretty amazing. She led us to a fully intact, and in very good condition, chimney from the 1800s. The chimney, which used to be connected to his house, belonged to a man named Albert Bell. He worked as a watchman for New York City and in 1947, he was still living on his property in Bushkill even after it had been bought by NYC. This was probably due to the fact that he was employed by the city. There were people in the town of West Hurley who also stayed in their homes after NYC had bought their property, as well.

Again, these are places we couldn't have, and wouldn’t have, found on our own. Janette took us off the trail in order to show us the chimney. Had she not been there, we wouldn’t have been able to witness and more importantly document that incredible ruin. Now, the story of Albert Bell, his life, and his chimney can live on and not be forgotten.

In the same way we need to center community knowledge and stories, we also need to center the experiences of these communities and the current issues they’re facing. Towns that were originally affected by the creation of the reservoirs and had their land bought by NYC are still being negatively impacted by the reservoir and land purchases to this day.

In the town of Olive, most of the commercial district is along Route 28. A flood buyout program was created by NYC for the properties along this Route in order to address the flooding problem. The Esposus, which is below the commercial district, has caused flood water to back up and in turn flood the district a few times. (Beisaw, 2019)

These buyouts, referred to as the Boiceville Buyouts, led to the businesses along this route being completely torn down and has resulted in less options for the community. These businesses weren’t as essential as the ones that have been recently torn down though, according to Olive resident Janette Kahil. Recently, several business properties have been condemned in Boiceville and in turn, the town has lost a truly essential complex. This complex had the only doctors' office, blood lab and physical therapy office in the area. Now, people must travel to other towns, such as Kingston, in order to get these services. Traveling to Kingston is also necessary for any large scale food shopping, as well as for work, as there aren’t many job opportunities besides working for a school or government agency, in the immediate area. Traveling to Kingston means driving over 20 miles away though, and it isn’t easy.

These conditions, according to Janette, are a burden for everyone in the community, but especially for the elderly people of the town.

“It is very hard for the elderly to live here without family to help them. No food delivery, no taxi, no assisted living." - Janette Kahil, 2022

Many elderly people of the community have not only lived in the town for their whole lives, but their family has been there for several generations. They want to peacefully retire and spend the rest of their days in Olive, but find it extremely difficult to do so because of how much the town lacks.

It’s because of realities like those that have led to a lot of resentment, hurt, and anger from locals for several decades now. Janette recalls hearing the “old timers” complain about the reservoir being built ever since she was born, and her grandfather claimed NYC took the best of the town’s farm land. The same can be said about other reservoir towns besides Olive.

An  article from the Times-Herald Record  describes the anger Neversink residents feel toward New York City for building the reservoir and taking their land. One resident, Jack Denman, had his family farm taken by the city over 50 years ago. They took 180 acres, all of which is now part of the Neversink Reservoir. His father was left with 88 acres, but they weren’t good for farming, making them worthless.

The article also details a detrimental decision made by the majority Democrats in the Legislature. The Democrats decided to change the tax structure and eliminated a tax benefit that the town had earned for decades due to the reservoir. The other towns would receive a small benefit from this change, but Neversink’s county taxes were to go up by 73 percent. This decision was ultimately made because New York City was suing the town to lower the taxes they were paying on the reservoir.

“Neversink has always seen itself as David in these battles with Goliath, fighting the good fight for the county. What the residents got for losing their homes and farms all those years ago, what they got for having to live with Goliath today, is a tax break — and the county has taken that away.” - Times Herald Record, 2005

Many community members have conflicting views about the reservoir, though. While there are many things locals resent about it, as described above, there are some things about the reservoir some locals don’t resent. Janette describes how she’s grateful for some of the restrictions placed on land development due to the reservoir:

“The restrictions on development and water quality has kept our town more rural than it would have been if the land hadn't been flooded. It is astoundingly beautiful and the views of the mountains from the main dam are breathtaking. I can only imagine how West Shokan would look now, maybe with fast food places, less open space, and too many people." - Janette Kahil, 2022

The history and the current realities of these reservoir towns, both bad and good, deserve to be shared with the public. The people of these towns and their histories should not go forgotten and untold, and the false myths surrounding the Catskills cannot continue to pervade public thought. So many people have absolutely no idea that the reservoir is man-made and people were displaced and lost their land in order to create it. This is not entirely their fault, as official NYC plaques and websites claim otherwise, but nonetheless people should be informed and the ignorance shouldn’t continue.

This is why we attempted to do our own “Anarchy Archaeology” interpretation of the Ashokan Reservoir at the Ashokan Rail Trail. We brought two large maps with us, one that was the original 1875 map of Olive, and another that detailed all of the land takings.

Dr.Beisaw laid the maps on the ground, and just started to explain the history of the reservoir, whose land was taken, how many women used to own property, which is more than people think, and other information. All of this was done in an attempt to catch the attention of people walking or riding by and gather a crowd.

In total, only one person stopped to listen overall. But, one person who may now know the truth about the reservoirs and the towns surrounding them, when they possibly didn’t before, is still progress.