The Ashokan Center is an outdoor education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

 center and retreat/conference facility located in the Catskills of upstate New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. Schools have used Ashokan's "classroom" of forests, waterfalls, stream fed ponds, and open meadows for over 40 years. Music camps, blacksmithing conferences, and retreat groups have called Ashokan home while schools are not in residence. The name "Ashokan" means "Place of many fishes" or "Where waters converge".

The location was the inspiration for Jay Ungar's

Jay Ungar

Jay Ungar is an American folk musician and composer. -Biography:Ungar was born in the Bronx , the son of immigrant Jewish parents from Eastern Europe. He frequented Greenwich Village music venues during his formative period in the 1960s...

 song Ashokan Farewell

Ashokan Farewell

"Ashokan Farewell" is a piece of music composed by Jay Ungar in 1982. It has served as a goodnight or farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps, run by the composer and his wife, at the lakefront campus of the State University of New York at New Paltz...

, which was used as the theme music for PBS's The Civil War

History

The Ashokan Field Campus was owned and operated by SUNY New Paltz's

State University of New York at New Paltz

The State University of New York at New Paltz, known as SUNY New Paltz for short, is a public university in New Paltz, New York. It was founded in 1828 as the School for teaching of classics. In 1885, the New Paltz Normal and Training School was established as a school to prepare teachers for the...

 College Auxiliary Service from 1967 until 2008.

The Field Campus was sold in 2008 to the Open Space Conservancy, part of the Open Space Institute

Open Space Institute

Open Space Institute is a conservation organization and think tank with an extensive mission statement. It seeks to preserve scenic, natural and historic landscapes for public enjoyment, conserve habitats while sustaining community character, and help protect the environment...

. The property was divided with a portion sold to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection

New York City Department of Environmental Protection

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is a City agency of nearly 6,000 employees that manages and conserves the City’s water supply; distributes more than one billion gallons of clean drinking water each day to nine million New Yorkers and collects wastewater through a vast...

 and the rest to the non-profit Ashokan Foundation.

Geology

The story of Ashokan begins over 400 million years ago during the Devonian Period. The vastly swollen Esopus Creek struggled to find its present path through Ashokan which was well-blocked by glacial moraine

Moraine

A moraine is any glacially formed accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris which can occur in currently glaciated and formerly glaciated regions, such as those areas acted upon by a past glacial maximum. This debris may have been plucked off a valley floor as a glacier advanced or it may have...

. Winchell’s Falls and Cathedral Gorge are relatively recent (past ten-thousand years) features. The newly uncovered till (glacial soil) was rocky and sterile, and much like northern Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 today. It was covered by tundra where feeding mammoths and other ice age mammals migrated along the un-crossable Esopus

Esopus Creek

Esopus Creek is a tributary of the Hudson River that drains the east-central Catskill Mountains of the U.S. state of New York. From its source at Winnisook Lake on the slopes of Slide Mountain, the Catskills' highest peak, it flows across Ulster County to the Hudson at Saugerties. Many tributaries...

. As the climate continued to warm, the open landscape gave way to spruce and fir of the boreal

Boreal ecosystem

The term boreal is usually applied to ecosystems localized in subarctic and subantarctic zones, although Austral is also used for the latter....

 forest. Mastodon

Mastodon

Mastodons were large tusked mammal species of the extinct genus Mammut which inhabited Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Central America from the Oligocene through Pleistocene, 33.9 mya to 11,000 years ago. The American mastodon is the most recent and best known species of the group...

s and woodland caribou took over the trail blazing begun by earlier mammals. At some point during this time, the first people entered the area hunting the ice-age “mega-fauna”. Evidence of these first people is scant in this area, but they undoubtedly followed the game trails along the Esopus.

Living History

The first homesteaders were a third generation Dutchman named Jacobus Bush, and his wife, Eycke Vandermerke, born in Marbletown

Marbletown, New York

Marbletown is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 5,854 at the 2000 census.The Town of Marbletown is near the center of Ulster County, southwest of the City of Kingston. US 209 and NY 213 pass through the town...

, Ulster County, New York in 1692 and 1687 respectively. Jacobus Jr. and his wife Annetje Merkel, recorded their ownership on a deed of remembrance in 1762. In 1755, his brother Thomas and his wife’s sister Elizabeth built a homestead a few hundred yards up the road. This is the house from which his son Fredrick’s children were kidnapped by Tory

Tory

Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...

 inspired “Indians”. Thomas was an outspoken proponent of the patriot cause. This was the frontier during the Revolutionary War and it was a common practice for Tories and their Indian allies to raid frontier homes. It had become such a problem that General Washington

George Washington

George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

 authorized the building of a fort at Shokan

Shokan, New York

Shokan is a hamlet located in the Town of Olive in Ulster County, within the Catskill Park. The population was 1,252 at the 2000 census.-History:...

, now under the waters of the Ashokan Reservoir.

External links

• Ashokan's Website