Community Heritage at the Ashokan Reservoir

Manhattan - an island surrounded by salt-water. The only fresh body of water available for drinking was the Collect Pond which, due to poor waste management and general pollution, was used as a popular dumping ground for murder victims instead of viable drinking water (Koeppel 2000, 116). Even if this water source never became polluted, Manhattan’s ever growing population demanded construction of a new water system by the 19th-century.

According to the plaques at the Ashokan reservoir, New York City Water system is a complex system of watersheds, reservoirs, and aqueducts that bring water from rural populations in the Catskills/Delaware Watershed and Croton Watershed to city populations through the use of gravity alone.

However, what the signs fail to recognize is that to build these reservoirs that combined hold more than 555 billion gallons of water, the city took land through eminent domain from families that lived in the watersheds (Beisaw 2016, 617 ). In all,  1,919 buildings  were destroyed for the construction and maintenance of the 19 reservoirs, changing many towns forever.

In 1905, construction began on one of the largest reservoirs, the Ashokan. To read about the construction of the Ashokan reservoir and displacement of the towns of Olive and Kent see this StoryMap on New York City’s Impact on Hudson River Valley Communities:  link .

To construct the reservoir, the city cleared 12,000 acres of land that destroyed 500 homes, 35 stores, 32 cemeteries, 10 churches, and eight mills (Stradling 2007, 167). Two-thousand living and 2,800 dead were displaced when construction began (Beisaw 2016, 617).

Despite acres of water now taking up the space of where 11 different hamlets once thrived, the story of these communities' struggle and perseverance can be found in the ruins left behind (Blauweiss and Berelowitz 2021). To read more about community heritage based archaeological surveys of the reservoirs see this StoryMap:  link .

Over the course of three days, we explored areas of Ashokan Northeast, Bushkill, and Sandhill with 16 different community volunteers. Currently, these areas around the reservoir are owned by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and special permission was needed to hike these areas. The community aspect of the hike was organized through Professor Beisaw and the  Olive Free Library , and locals came either to learn with us or share their families experience, history, and knowledge of the area. While we had possible foundation locations mapped as destinations, these were only jumping-off points that were used in hopes of sparking memories about local history.

During our hike at the Ashokan Reservoir, we were joined by Olive resident Janette Kahil. Her maternal family came to the area in 1790, and she is the third generation to live in Olive 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.

According to Janette Kahill, this chimney belonged to the home of Albert Bell. Despite most of the land in the area being claimed through eminent domain by the 1940s for the construction and maintenance of the reservoir, Albert Bell still lived in his home into the late 1940s. He became sort of a watchman for New York City and was allowed to stay on his land, despite it being owned by the city. This can be seen in Albert Bell’s U.S. World War I draft card under the employer's name section. Albert Bell, who was born on March 18th in 1873 worked for the Department of Labor in West Shokan, New York.

By 1940, Albert Bell would have been 67 and Janette’s mom would often see the older Mr. Bell walking across the street to Synder’s Tavern - which is still open across the street today.

On our second day of the hike, we started off in Bushkill. We found an area that Janette said used to be the Crispell grove. She recounted the history of the grove and the family who owned it, both during the hike and after, through email.

The Crispell family grew to be influential in Olive, part of which was due to the various events and gatherings they would hold for the community at their grove. In 1906, for example, the Crispells held a Fourth of July celebration where there was music from a band, food, and baseball games.

Even church services were held in the grove. Black residents of the town would congregate at The Grove House, an outdoor pavilion in the grove built in 1871 by Martin H. Crispell, and would hold evening service, which was often accompanied by a choir.

The choir, sometimes with organ accompaniment and sometimes not, augmented by the voices of the congregation, would make the grove ring."- Elwyn Davis

The Grove House was one story, 60' x 80', and featured an attached kitchen where they sold ice cream and soft drinks. It was so popular that residents from Kingston would come by train to hold gatherings there.

The Crispells also took in guests or boarders at the grove during the summer, and after the city took their house and farm while the reservoir was being built, they moved up the hill to west Shokan Heights Road. There, they continued to take in guests at their new home. The house is still there to this day. 

While it was Janette who informed us of the history of the grove and the Crispells, she first learned that information through Elwyn Crispell Davis and his diaries. Elwyn, the son of Chase Davis and Matie Crispell, kept a diary for over 70 years where he detailed his daily life, his family’s history, and what life was like in Olive before the reservoir was built. His diaries can be checked out at the  Olive Free Library. 

Elwyn also frequently wrote for local newspapers after the reservoir was built in order to keep the town's history alive and accessible.

In one article that he wrote for the Kingston Daily Freeman, entitled "When Slavery Days exisited in Ulster County," he details how his great grandfather, Thomas Crispell, purchased an enslaved man named Jacky on March 24, 1795. While enslaved, Jacky married a younger woman named Rhoda. Eventually, Jacky was freed by Thomas Crispell because Thomas' son, Abram, wanted his father to free Jacky. Elwyn was unsure if Jacky was freed because Abram, who was a teenager at the time, resented Jacky telling him what to do or if Abram had just convinced his dad that it was the right and just thing to do.

After freeing Jacky, Thomas Crispell gave Jacky and his wife a strip of land and helped him build a log cabin home. Jacky then planted an apple orchard, which was called the Jacky Orchard, along Jacky Brook, both of which were also named after him by the Crispells. He raised his own family on this land and would occasionally do jobs for Thomas Crispell, though his main job, and area of expertise, was leather bootmaking. Men traveled from various towns from all over just to get a pair of his custom leather boots.

What used to be Jacky's land is very close to the current Olive Library, and in 1933, Elwyn said the log cabin foundation and fallen down chimney was still visible, as well as a couple of gnarled old apple trees.

The town of Olive was once a railroad town with businesses that would line the railway. At the railroad stops, each one would have its own station and downtown community of businesses, churches, and schools (Beisaw 2019). Some of these stations included Brown's Station, Brodhead, West Shokan, and Boiceville. Many of these stations thrived on the city tourists that would travel to the mountains for fresh air. Boarding houses would become a staple in these business districts, but there were also a vast array of shops.

One popular business in Olive was wagon and blacksmith shops. At the end of our morning part of the hike on the last day we were able to find a foundation that correlates to one of these old wagon shops on the 1875 Beers Atlas map. Although we have yet to find definite records that confirms the owner of the shop in the 1871 business directory for the town of Olive there were 6 carriage makers and 1 carriage painter. The wagon shop foundation that we discovered was located in Boice Village in 1875 and in the 1871 business directory William Cure was a carriage maker in the same town.

Other carriage makers in Olive included John Dubois in Olive Bridge, William Bush in Shokan, and George Siemon in West Shokan. George Siemon owned a wagon and blacksmith shop on Main Street in West Shokan. In addition to being a carriage maker and blacksmith, Mr. Siemon was the organizer of a successful baseball team in 1884.

Mr. Siemon’s wagon shop was located along Batement Stream, the previous site of Crispell family saw mill.

Without Janette accompanying us on these hikes, we wouldn't have known about Albert Bell's chimney, or about the histories and stories of the Crispell grove, or the wagon shop. While we may have known some of these places' locations and history, what we did not know was the stories that brought these places to life.

This reinforces the idea behind why we did these hikes with community members in the first place: Stories and histories from community members fill in our gaps of knowledge, and reveal stories that are connected to the land - stories that we can’t always discover because there isn’t always physical evidence of something’s existence. Or if there is, we may not be able to identify it without context and in turn will not get the full story. Local knowledge and histories can tell us so much and we must center them, especially when doing archaeology. 

As talked about at the beginning of the piece, the plaques at the Ashokan reservoir tell a history that centers New York City. They focus on describing the water system as a spectacular feat of engineering. In the brief moments where they talk about life before the reservoir, it is a manner that is meant to evoke a sense of nostalgia instead of claiming responsibility for the displacement of thousands of people. To correct this narrative, the plaques at the Ashokan reservoir need to decenter New York City as the basis of their knowledge. For example, the maps above that depict the land-takings of the 1930s and 1940s and the town of Olive before the construction of the reservoir could be included on these plaques. By centering local knowledge through community heritage archaeology, the history of struggle and perseverance that happened as a result of the displacement of towns can be revealed.

Beisaw , April. “Taking Their Water: New York City's Impact on Hudson Valley Communities.” ArcGIS StoryMaps. Esri, December 27, 2019. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/14ad17ffeab9424db0ffabc4a661082b?item=1.

Beisaw, April M. “Water for the City, Ruins for the Country: Archaeology of the New York City Watershed.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 20, no. 3 (2016): 614–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0363-4.

Blauweiss , Stephen, and Karen Berelowitz. “Local History: The Ashokan Reservoir .” Hudson Valley One - Independent news & entertainment of the Hudson Valley, November 10, 2021. https://hudsonvalleyone.com/2021/11/05/local-history-the-ashokan-reservoir/.

Koeppel, Gerard T. Water for Gotham: A History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Stradling, David. Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2010.