Kaaterskill Falls
Encyclopedia
Kaaterskill Falls is a two-drop waterfall
located near in the eastern Catskill Mountains
of New York
, on the north side of Kaaterskill Clove, between the hamlets of Haines Falls
and Palenville
in Greene County's
Town of Hunter
. The dual cascades total 260 feet (79 m) in height, making it one of the higher waterfalls in New York, and one of the Eastern United States' taller waterfalls.
The falls are one of America's oldest tourist attractions, with it appearing in some of the most prominent books, essays, poems and paintings of the early 19th century. Long before Alexis de Tocqueville
's famous essay on America, Kaaterskill Falls was lauded as a place where a traveler could see a wilder image, a sort of primeval Eden. Beginning with Thomas Cole
's first visit in 1825, they became an icon subject for painter
s of the Hudson River School
, setting the wilderness ideal for American landscape painting. The Falls also inspired "Catterskill Falls", a poem by William Cullen Bryant
.
time. They evolved through stream capture at the end of the Illinoian Stage
, when runoff from the glacial
melt that created North-South Lake
began to flow away from the nearby headwaters
of Schoharie Creek
and down the steep slopes of the newly-created clove. The rushing waters of what would become known as Spruce Creek eroded
a natural amphitheater at roughly 2,000 feet (609 m) on the south slope of South Mountain.
Most of the drop is accounted for by the upper cascade. The shelf breaking the two falls (and creating the huge pool) is the break between the Manorkill Sandstone
formed in the Middle Devonian
period and the Oneonta-Genesee sandstone-shale
mix of the late Devonian period.
, it had a minor role among the indigenous peoples
of the Hudson Valley
, who generally avoided the Catskills due to the limited agricultural
possibilities of higher elevations and occasionally ventured into the mountains to hunt
game. Thomas Cole
populated the Falls with an occasional Indian in his earliest paintings http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/COLE-T-FlsofK.jpg.
The falls' name, like that of the features around it, probably came from a later corruption of "Catskill" by English
-speaking colonists who had supplanted the Dutch
by the early 18th century. Cat could mean Bobcat or Mountain Lion, while "kill
" means stream in Dutch, the original language of the first European colonists in the 17th century.
Early American naturalist
John Bartram
and his son visited the falls on his famous 1753 expedition to the area. He wrote about it in "A Journey to Ye Cat Skill Mountains with Billy," one of the earliest Catskill travelogues, which became widely read not only in the colonies but back in Britain
as well. He called it "the great gulf that swallowed all down" and estimated their height at approximately a hundred feet (31 m), in a somewhat hurried account. However, he may have written his patron Peter Collinson
a more detailed version, and his son William may have included a sketch.
." Prior to that time Americans tended to regard the mountains and valleys of upstate New York as an unsafe neighborhood populated by savage natives, aided and encouraged by the British. The famous painting, "The Murder of Jane McRea" http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWmcCrea.htm by Kingston, NY native John Vanderlyn
, best illustrates this local attitude. It wasn't until after the War of 1812
when the frontier shifted far to the west, that attitudes changed and people began to look at the lofty heights around the Hudson River valley as something scenic rather than ominous or fearsome. About the same time local farmers were being put out of business by the cheap grain shipped east by an Erie Canal, usable in stages while under construction. Irving's story invited Cole and others to discover the valley when Irving introduced the Falls of the Kaaterskill in "Rip Van Winkle
". Upon the reawakening from the twenty year slumber, Irving wrote the following passage about Rip coming to his senses and heading home:
Pioneering Hudson River School
artist Thomas Cole
was drawn by the story, and took a steamboat ride up the Hudson, stopping at West Point then going north to Catskill, NY where he ventured into Kaaterskill Clove in October 1825 http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/Cole.htm.
The resulting paintings made the front page of the New York Evening Post and in an era of Erie Canal boom wealth made the Hudson River valley, and scenic locations like Kaaterskill Falls, some of the foremost and famous tourist destinations in the rapidly expanding United States. Cole's highly influential paintings from that trip inspired the first real generation of truly American
artists for whom a trip to the Clove, Kaaterskill Falls and Charles Beach's Catskill Mountain House
became something of a pilgrimage. The earliest known view of the front of the Falls by Thomas Cole is dated 1826 is in the Westervelt Warner Museum in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
.http://www.warnermuseum.org/quicktour12.htmhttp://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/COLE-T-FlsofK.jpg Nearby Palenville, New York
is considered to be the first art colony in the United States as a result (noted by Dr. Roland Van Zandt, author of The Catskill Mountain House, pages 175-178). Other artists who painted the falls included Frederic Edwin Church
http://www.albanyinstitute.org/collections/Hudson/images/church.JPG, Sanford Giffordhttp://www.thecityreview.com/srgiff.html, Winslow Homer
http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/Homer-1876-KF.JPG, Max Eglau, Richard William Hubbard and John Frederick Kensett
. Their work in turn attracted affluent visitors to the Catskill Mountain House
and the other hotels established near it later.
One of the best-known depiction of the falls popularized by recent news http://www.nga.gov/press/2005/releases/durand/index.shtm, is Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits
(1849), a highly stylized rendition. It eulogized the recently deceased Thomas Cole
by depicting him and William Cullen Bryant
standing on Fawn's Leap http://www.eastman.org/fm/st05/htmlsrc/m198187750035_ful.htmlhttp://www.thomascolville.com/catalogue/hill_jw/index.htm looking out over a landscape that synthesized the falls and parts of the surrounding clove, including Haines Falls, into a landscape that, while visually striking, is really an imagined view of the falls. Prior to the painting's execution, in 1836, Bryant had complemented Cole's visualizations with versification when he wrote "Catterskill Falls", which described a wintertime encounter:
The phenomenon he described — the erection of an ice column by the falls during particularly cold stretches of winter — was well known to frequent visitors.
At some time in the 19th century the falls were used as a mill to power a tannery http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/SRGifford-1846.jpg. The Laurel House http://www.catskillarchive.com/laurel/index.htm, a nearby hotel, acquired the water rights to Spruce Creek and dam
med it during tourist season, charging spectators http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/Homer-1876-KF.JPG below the falls a fee to watch as the waters were unleashed and the falls "turned on". Like the nearby Catskill Mountain House, the Laurel House was also razed by the state http://www.catskillarchive.com/laurel/.
"A tragic story of a dog's devotion to his master, even unto death, is graven deep on a tablet hewn in the face of a rock beside the Kaaterskill Falls at the time of its occurrence." Local legend suggests that on June 19 of every year, the spaniel haunts the vicinity of the falls and "as the hands of the clock mark the witching hour, a succession of short, sharp barks is heard followed by the flight of the apparition through the air over the falls into the precipice, whence arises a prolonged howl which echoes and re-echoes among the Cimmerian recesses of Sunset Gorge and the forest clad slope of High Peak Mountain"
In 1885 New York State established the Forest Peserve
, which later became part of the New York State Constitution. The "forever wild" requirement helped protect the area from logging and commercial development, once the falls property came into state ownership during the early 20th century. They are today part of the North Mountain Wild Forest, a Forest Preserve Unit owned and managed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
(DEC).
The Kaaterskill Hotel was never rebuilt after a 1920s fire, and the Mountain House itself was burned to the ground by the State Conservation Department (the forerunner to DEC) at 6:00am on January 25, 1963, after having fallen into severe disrepair. The Falls and the surrounding area were prominently featured in a 2002 PBS documentary, "America's First River, Bill Moyers on the Hudson."http://www.pbs.org/now/science/HUDSON1.pdf#search=%22catskills%20bill%20moyers%22
While the falls are on public land, they can only be reached via the Kaaterskill Falls Trail, a state-maintained yellow-blazed
path running 0.4 mile (650 m) uphill from NY 23A
, the only road through the clove. This has presented two safety issues.
First, the trail itself climbs rather steeply from the road, along the sometimes steep and rocky slopes alongside the creek. Challenging enough for experienced hikers
, as the most-hiked trail in the Catskill Park it is used heavily by casual visitors who may be ill-prepared for the terrain between the road and the falls. The heavy traffic has compounded the trail's problems through erosion.
Second, the trail is served by two parking lots along 23A, both of which require a walk of at least 0.2 mile (400 m) to reach the trailhead at Bastion Falls, just above 23A at a bend in the road. Due to both the rugged surrounding terrain and the limitations placed on Forest Preserve land by the state constitution, New York's Department of Transportation
(DOT) has been unable to expand the narrow shoulder
on either side of the road, requiring that visitors walk very close to high-speed traffic, including truck
s, some of which are in the middle of descending a pronounced grade. The risk of serious accidents is very high. Both DOT and DEC have indicated a willingness to sit down and work out a solution that will accommodate their concerns, however this has not happened as of 2006. Some hikers try to avoid this by parking near the Laurel House site or at North-South Lake
and following the closed route of the former Escarpment Trail; this is equally risky as it runs very near the edge of the falls.
Today, the trail officially ends, and is blocked off at, the lower of the two falls. However, the former treadway is still usable, and many visitors continue past the brush pile to get closer to the falls. Some venture into the natural amphitheater behind the falls, and it is here and from the ledge above the falls that more than one hiker has fallen to death. The height of the upper interior rim of the upper falls amphitheater is deceptively high and the footing is tenuous. In 2004 a Putnam County
woman sued the state over injuries sustained in her fall into the pool from the top of the falls, arguing the state had a responsibility to put a barrier there. Four years later a state Court of Claims
judge ruled against her, saying the danger "was open and obvious to anyone employing the reasonable use of her senses". The trail's junction with the current Escarpment Trail route just past the Laurel House site is also readily apparent due to the rock pile used to block it off and the wood pole that once held mileage signs. It, too, is still used unofficially to reach the falls.
, across the clove, and sometimes even from the fire tower
on Hunter Mountain
.
The Catskill Mountain House and The World Around http://www.documentaryworld.com/Catskill_mountain_house.html documentary contains many scenes of the waterfall as well as Hudson River School Art depictions, postcards and drawings of the waterfall.
Waterfall
A waterfall is a place where flowing water rapidly drops in elevation as it flows over a steep region or a cliff.-Formation:Waterfalls are commonly formed when a river is young. At these times the channel is often narrow and deep. When the river courses over resistant bedrock, erosion happens...
located near in the eastern Catskill Mountains
Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau...
of 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...
, on the north side of Kaaterskill Clove, between the hamlets of Haines Falls
Haines Falls, New York
Haines Falls is a hamlet located east of Tannersville, New York in the Town of Hunter, in Greene County, New York. Haines Falls is located at .-Transportation:...
and Palenville
Palenville, New York
Palenville is a hamlet in Greene County, New York, United States. The population was 1,037 at the 2010 census.Palenville is in the southwest part of the Town of Catskill, located at the junction of Routes 23A and 32A. It lies at the foot of Kaaterskill Clove, nestled against the base of the...
in Greene County's
Greene County, New York
Greene County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Its name is in honor of the American Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene. Its county seat is Catskill...
Town of Hunter
Hunter (town), New York
Hunter is a town in Greene County, New York. The population was 2,732 at the 2010 census.The Town of Hunter contain two villages one named Hunter and the other called Tannersville. The town is on the County's south border.- History :...
. The dual cascades total 260 feet (79 m) in height, making it one of the higher waterfalls in New York, and one of the Eastern United States' taller waterfalls.
The falls are one of America's oldest tourist attractions, with it appearing in some of the most prominent books, essays, poems and paintings of the early 19th century. Long before Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
's famous essay on America, Kaaterskill Falls was lauded as a place where a traveler could see a wilder image, a sort of primeval Eden. Beginning with Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century...
's first visit in 1825, they became an icon subject for painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
s of the Hudson River School
Hudson River school
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...
, setting the wilderness ideal for American landscape painting. The Falls also inspired "Catterskill Falls", a poem by William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.-Youth and education:...
.
Geological formation
The falls, like the clove and creek with which they share a name, are a relatively recent addition to the Catskills in geologicGeology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
time. They evolved through stream capture at the end of the Illinoian Stage
Illinoian Stage
The Illinoian Stage is the name used by Quaternary geologists in North America to designate the period of geologic time of ~300,000—130,000 years ago, a period of ~ during the middle Pleistocene when sediments comprising the Illinoian Glacial Lobe were deposited. It precedes the Sangamonian stage...
, when runoff from the glacial
Glacier
A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...
melt that created North-South Lake
North-South Lake
North-South Lake is an 1,100-acre state campground in the Catskill Forest Preserve near Palenville, New York operated by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation near the site of the historic Catskill Mountain House overlooking the Hudson River...
began to flow away from the nearby headwaters
Source (river or stream)
The source or headwaters of a river or stream is the place from which the water in the river or stream originates.-Definition:There is no universally agreed upon definition for determining a stream's source...
of Schoharie Creek
Schoharie Creek
Schoharie Creek in New York, USA flows north from the foot of Indian Head Mountain in the Catskill Mountains through the Schoharie Valley to the Mohawk River. It is twice impounded north of Prattsville to create New York City's Schoharie Reservoir and the Blenheim-Gilboa Power Project.Two notable...
and down the steep slopes of the newly-created clove. The rushing waters of what would become known as Spruce Creek eroded
Erosion
Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...
a natural amphitheater at roughly 2,000 feet (609 m) on the south slope of South Mountain.
Most of the drop is accounted for by the upper cascade. The shelf breaking the two falls (and creating the huge pool) is the break between the Manorkill Sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...
formed in the Middle Devonian
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...
period and the Oneonta-Genesee sandstone-shale
Shale
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable. Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering...
mix of the late Devonian period.
Colonial era
While the falls' existence was known prior to European colonizationEuropean colonization of the Americas
The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492. The first Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement in present day Newfoundland...
, it had a minor role among the indigenous peoples
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
of the Hudson Valley
Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in New York State, United States, from northern Westchester County northward to the cities of Albany and Troy.-History:...
, who generally avoided the Catskills due to the limited agricultural
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
possibilities of higher elevations and occasionally ventured into the mountains to hunt
Hunting
Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wildlife, for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law...
game. Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century...
populated the Falls with an occasional Indian in his earliest paintings http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/COLE-T-FlsofK.jpg.
The falls' name, like that of the features around it, probably came from a later corruption of "Catskill" by English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
-speaking colonists who had supplanted the Dutch
Dutch people
The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...
by the early 18th century. Cat could mean Bobcat or Mountain Lion, while "kill
Kill (body of water)
As a body of water, a kill is a creek. The word comes from the Middle Dutch kille, meaning "riverbed" or "water channel." The modern Dutch term is kil....
" means stream in Dutch, the original language of the first European colonists in the 17th century.
Early American naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
John Bartram
John Bartram
*Hoffmann, Nancy E. and John C. Van Horne, eds., America’s Curious Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal of John Bartram 1699-1777. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 243. ....
and his son visited the falls on his famous 1753 expedition to the area. He wrote about it in "A Journey to Ye Cat Skill Mountains with Billy," one of the earliest Catskill travelogues, which became widely read not only in the colonies but back in Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
as well. He called it "the great gulf that swallowed all down" and estimated their height at approximately a hundred feet (31 m), in a somewhat hurried account. However, he may have written his patron Peter Collinson
Peter Collinson FRS
Peter Collinson was a Fellow of the Royal Society, an avid gardener, and the middleman for an international exchange of scientific ideas in mid-18th century London...
a more detailed version, and his son William may have included a sketch.
Hudson River School
The falls' fame in America really began when Washington Irving mentioned them in his story published in 1819 "Rip Van WinkleRip Van Winkle
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon...
." Prior to that time Americans tended to regard the mountains and valleys of upstate New York as an unsafe neighborhood populated by savage natives, aided and encouraged by the British. The famous painting, "The Murder of Jane McRea" http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WWmcCrea.htm by Kingston, NY native John Vanderlyn
John Vanderlyn
John Vanderlyn was an American neoclassicist painter.-Biography:Vanderlyn was born at Kingston, New York. He was employed by a print-seller in New York, and was first instructed in art by Archibald Robinson , a Scotsman who was afterwards one of the directors of the American Academy of the Fine Arts...
, best illustrates this local attitude. It wasn't until after the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
when the frontier shifted far to the west, that attitudes changed and people began to look at the lofty heights around the Hudson River valley as something scenic rather than ominous or fearsome. About the same time local farmers were being put out of business by the cheap grain shipped east by an Erie Canal, usable in stages while under construction. Irving's story invited Cole and others to discover the valley when Irving introduced the Falls of the Kaaterskill in "Rip Van Winkle
Rip Van Winkle
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon...
". Upon the reawakening from the twenty year slumber, Irving wrote the following passage about Rip coming to his senses and heading home:
Pioneering Hudson River School
Hudson River school
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...
artist Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century...
was drawn by the story, and took a steamboat ride up the Hudson, stopping at West Point then going north to Catskill, NY where he ventured into Kaaterskill Clove in October 1825 http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/Cole.htm.
The resulting paintings made the front page of the New York Evening Post and in an era of Erie Canal boom wealth made the Hudson River valley, and scenic locations like Kaaterskill Falls, some of the foremost and famous tourist destinations in the rapidly expanding United States. Cole's highly influential paintings from that trip inspired the first real generation of truly American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artists for whom a trip to the Clove, Kaaterskill Falls and Charles Beach's Catskill Mountain House
Catskill Mountain House
The Catskill Mountain House was a famous hotel near Palenville, New York in the Catskill Mountains overlooking the Hudson River Valley, built in 1824. In its prime, from the 1850s to the turn of the century, it was visited by three U.S. presidents The Catskill Mountain House was a famous hotel...
became something of a pilgrimage. The earliest known view of the front of the Falls by Thomas Cole is dated 1826 is in the Westervelt Warner Museum in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Tuscaloosa is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west central Alabama . Located on the Black Warrior River, it is the fifth-largest city in Alabama, with a population of 90,468 in 2010...
.http://www.warnermuseum.org/quicktour12.htmhttp://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/COLE-T-FlsofK.jpg Nearby Palenville, New York
Palenville, New York
Palenville is a hamlet in Greene County, New York, United States. The population was 1,037 at the 2010 census.Palenville is in the southwest part of the Town of Catskill, located at the junction of Routes 23A and 32A. It lies at the foot of Kaaterskill Clove, nestled against the base of the...
is considered to be the first art colony in the United States as a result (noted by Dr. Roland Van Zandt, author of The Catskill Mountain House, pages 175-178). Other artists who painted the falls included Frederic Edwin Church
Frederic Edwin Church
Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters...
http://www.albanyinstitute.org/collections/Hudson/images/church.JPG, Sanford Giffordhttp://www.thecityreview.com/srgiff.html, Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....
http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/Homer-1876-KF.JPG, Max Eglau, Richard William Hubbard and John Frederick Kensett
John Frederick Kensett
John Frederick Kensett was an American artist and engraver. He attended school at Cheshire Academy, and studied engraving with his immigrant father, Thomas Kensett, and later with his uncle, Alfred Dagget...
. Their work in turn attracted affluent visitors to the Catskill Mountain House
Catskill Mountain House
The Catskill Mountain House was a famous hotel near Palenville, New York in the Catskill Mountains overlooking the Hudson River Valley, built in 1824. In its prime, from the 1850s to the turn of the century, it was visited by three U.S. presidents The Catskill Mountain House was a famous hotel...
and the other hotels established near it later.
Kindred Spirits
Kindred Spirits is a painting by the Hudson River School painter Asher Durand. It depicts the previously deceased painter Thomas Cole and his friend poet William Cullen Bryant in the Catskill Mountains...
(1849), a highly stylized rendition. It eulogized the recently deceased Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century...
by depicting him and William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.-Youth and education:...
standing on Fawn's Leap http://www.eastman.org/fm/st05/htmlsrc/m198187750035_ful.htmlhttp://www.thomascolville.com/catalogue/hill_jw/index.htm looking out over a landscape that synthesized the falls and parts of the surrounding clove, including Haines Falls, into a landscape that, while visually striking, is really an imagined view of the falls. Prior to the painting's execution, in 1836, Bryant had complemented Cole's visualizations with versification when he wrote "Catterskill Falls", which described a wintertime encounter:
The phenomenon he described — the erection of an ice column by the falls during particularly cold stretches of winter — was well known to frequent visitors.
At some time in the 19th century the falls were used as a mill to power a tannery http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/SRGifford-1846.jpg. The Laurel House http://www.catskillarchive.com/laurel/index.htm, a nearby hotel, acquired the water rights to Spruce Creek and dam
Dam
A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are...
med it during tourist season, charging spectators http://hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/Homer-1876-KF.JPG below the falls a fee to watch as the waters were unleashed and the falls "turned on". Like the nearby Catskill Mountain House, the Laurel House was also razed by the state http://www.catskillarchive.com/laurel/.
The Bayard of Dogs
On the left side of the falls, halfway between the middle and top level there is a worn engraving that is dated 1868. It is dedicated to the "Bayard of Dogs""A tragic story of a dog's devotion to his master, even unto death, is graven deep on a tablet hewn in the face of a rock beside the Kaaterskill Falls at the time of its occurrence." Local legend suggests that on June 19 of every year, the spaniel haunts the vicinity of the falls and "as the hands of the clock mark the witching hour, a succession of short, sharp barks is heard followed by the flight of the apparition through the air over the falls into the precipice, whence arises a prolonged howl which echoes and re-echoes among the Cimmerian recesses of Sunset Gorge and the forest clad slope of High Peak Mountain"
Public ownership
Forest Preserve (New York)
New York's Forest Preserve is all the land owned by the state within the Adirondack and Catskill parks, managed by its Department of Environmental Conservation. These properties are required to be kept "forever wild" by Article 14 of the state constitution, and thus enjoy the highest degree of...
, which later became part of the New York State Constitution. The "forever wild" requirement helped protect the area from logging and commercial development, once the falls property came into state ownership during the early 20th century. They are today part of the North Mountain Wild Forest, a Forest Preserve Unit owned and managed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is responsible for the conservation, improvement, and protection of natural resources within the U.S. state of New York. It was founded in 1970, replacing the previous Conservation Department...
(DEC).
The Kaaterskill Hotel was never rebuilt after a 1920s fire, and the Mountain House itself was burned to the ground by the State Conservation Department (the forerunner to DEC) at 6:00am on January 25, 1963, after having fallen into severe disrepair. The Falls and the surrounding area were prominently featured in a 2002 PBS documentary, "America's First River, Bill Moyers on the Hudson."http://www.pbs.org/now/science/HUDSON1.pdf#search=%22catskills%20bill%20moyers%22
Access
Trail blazing
Trail blazing, or trailblazing, is the practice of marking paths in outdoor recreational areas with blazes, markings that follow each other at certain — though not necessarily exactly defined — distances and mark the direction of the trail...
path running 0.4 mile (650 m) uphill from NY 23A
New York State Route 23A
New York State Route 23A is an east–west state highway in Greene County, New York, in the United States. It serves as a alternate route of NY 23 through the northern Catskill Mountains...
, the only road through the clove. This has presented two safety issues.
First, the trail itself climbs rather steeply from the road, along the sometimes steep and rocky slopes alongside the creek. Challenging enough for experienced hikers
Hiking
Hiking is an outdoor activity which consists of walking in natural environments, often in mountainous or other scenic terrain. People often hike on hiking trails. It is such a popular activity that there are numerous hiking organizations worldwide. The health benefits of different types of hiking...
, as the most-hiked trail in the Catskill Park it is used heavily by casual visitors who may be ill-prepared for the terrain between the road and the falls. The heavy traffic has compounded the trail's problems through erosion.
Second, the trail is served by two parking lots along 23A, both of which require a walk of at least 0.2 mile (400 m) to reach the trailhead at Bastion Falls, just above 23A at a bend in the road. Due to both the rugged surrounding terrain and the limitations placed on Forest Preserve land by the state constitution, New York's Department of Transportation
New York State Department of Transportation
The New York State Department of Transportation is responsible for the development and operation of highways, railroads, mass transit systems, ports, waterways and aviation facilities in the U.S...
(DOT) has been unable to expand the narrow shoulder
Shoulder (road)
A hard shoulder, or simply shoulder, is a reserved area by the verge of a road or motorway. Generally it is kept clear of motor vehicle traffic...
on either side of the road, requiring that visitors walk very close to high-speed traffic, including truck
Truck
A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, with the smallest being mechanically similar to an automobile...
s, some of which are in the middle of descending a pronounced grade. The risk of serious accidents is very high. Both DOT and DEC have indicated a willingness to sit down and work out a solution that will accommodate their concerns, however this has not happened as of 2006. Some hikers try to avoid this by parking near the Laurel House site or at North-South Lake
North-South Lake
North-South Lake is an 1,100-acre state campground in the Catskill Forest Preserve near Palenville, New York operated by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation near the site of the historic Catskill Mountain House overlooking the Hudson River...
and following the closed route of the former Escarpment Trail; this is equally risky as it runs very near the edge of the falls.
Safety issues
The Kaaterskill Falls Trail was built in 1967 as the southern terminus of the popular Escarpment Trail, which runs along the ridge that bounds the Catskills to the northeast. In the late 1980s, DEC had to close the trail above the falls and build a new southern section along Schutt Road to limit the state's liability for injuries and fatalities that were occurring at the falls.Putnam County, New York
Putnam County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York, in the lower Hudson River Valley. Putnam county formed in 1812, when it detached from Dutchess County. , the population was 99,710. It is part of the New York Metropolitan Area. The county seat is the hamlet of Carmel...
woman sued the state over injuries sustained in her fall into the pool from the top of the falls, arguing the state had a responsibility to put a barrier there. Four years later a state Court of Claims
New York Court of Claims
The New York State Court of Claims is the court which handles all claims against the State of New York and certain state agencies. It is not a small claims court. Judges of the Court of Claims are appointed by the Governor of New York and confirmed by the State Senate for a 9-year term...
judge ruled against her, saying the danger "was open and obvious to anyone employing the reasonable use of her senses". The trail's junction with the current Escarpment Trail route just past the Laurel House site is also readily apparent due to the rock pile used to block it off and the wood pole that once held mileage signs. It, too, is still used unofficially to reach the falls.
Visibility
For those not able to get too close to it, the falls can be seen in their entirety in the distance from the northern approach to the summit of Kaaterskill High PeakKaaterskill High Peak
Kaaterskill High Peak is one of the Catskill Mountains, located in the Town of Hunter in Greene County, New York, USA. It was once believed to be the highest peak in the entire range, but its summit, at 3,655 feet in elevation, places it only 23rd among the Catskill High Peaks. It is, however,...
, across the clove, and sometimes even from the fire tower
Hunter Mountain Fire Tower
The Hunter Mountain Fire Tower is located on the summit of the eponymous mountain, second highest of the Catskill Mountains in the U.S. state of New York. It was the first of 23 fire lookout towers built by the state in the region, and the next-to-last of the five still standing to be...
on Hunter Mountain
Hunter Mountain (New York)
Hunter Mountain is in the towns of Hunter and Lexington, just south of the village of Hunter, in Greene County, New York, USA. At approximately 4,040 feet in elevation, it is the highest peak in the county and the second-highest peak in the Catskill Mountains.While the mountain is closely...
.
External links
- USGS description of falls
- Kaaterskill Falls Photo Gallery
- Guide to where the Hudson River School artists painted in the Kaaterskill Falls area
- "Catterskill Falls"
- History of the Town of Hunter: The town where Kaaterskill Falls is located
The Catskill Mountain House and The World Around http://www.documentaryworld.com/Catskill_mountain_house.html documentary contains many scenes of the waterfall as well as Hudson River School Art depictions, postcards and drawings of the waterfall.