“These were isolated communities, so the culture developed very distinctly,” he noted.
After it was discovered that hemlock bark was particularly effective in tanning cow hides, the tanning industry became huge; in 1825, the largest tannery in the world was located at Prattsville. There were smaller tanneries along the Esopus Creek — water was needed as well as bark — which had a life expectancy of 27 years.
The Catskills became a fashionable tourist resort starting in 1820, with the building of the Catskill Mountain House on an escarpment overlooking the Hudson. The forest preserve was founded in the 1880s and, like the Adirondacks, is unique in consisting of a patchwork of privately owned and public lands.
In 1881, with the arrival of the railroad, the Grand Hotel was built on Highmount, heralding a new standard of luxury to the area. “All of a sudden there was a big crush of tourism here,” Birns said. “People were looking for a romantic wilderness.” The availability of fresh milk was a lure to the health-conscious tourists in the 1920s. Locals were resourceful in meeting visitors’ demands: ”Whether it’s fishing, fresh air, fresh milk or the romantic wilderness that bring the tourists, people who live here figure out what they need to do to provide what people want,” said Birns.
Birns noted that the floods of 2011 most impacted “the poorest and most vulnerable people,” who tend to live along the creeks and river, where their ancestors settled many generations ago. He added that another threat to the natives is the skyrocketing real-estate market, boosted by the arrival of affluent second-home owners from the city.
“Every stream has a history,” Birns concluded. Among the noteworthy characters associated with the Esopus was a fly fisherman from Phoenicia named Ray Smith. “He was Babe Ruth’s guide and also had a couple of writers for the Fred Allen radio show as his clients.” When Smith was featured on the radio show with its “high-end wits,” he “held his own,” said Birns.
More rain, less water
According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, from 1951 to 2010 the frequency or intensity of heavy precipitation has likely increased in North America and Europe. Other studies cited by climatologist Allan Frei also indicated an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events. In the last decade or two a larger section of the Northeast is experiencing an above-average number of days with precipitation.
“We’re seeing flooding in previously unflooded areas, higher elevation areas included,” Frei said, which is putting the transportation, agricultural and tourism sectors at risk.
The double whammy of Irene and Lee, which hit eleven days later in September 2011, is unprecedented, according to data from regional weather stations. “There’s no other 60-day period in the records in which you have two events ranked in the one or two percentile” as in the case of Irene and Lee, Frei said. The impact was made worse by the fact that the preceding month had been unusually wet.
The heavy rainfalls are altering the geomorphology of streams. “We’re seeing sediment that has not been exposed to the surface in thousands of years — glacial till that has not been exposed in 15,000 to 20,000 years, since the last ice age,” Frei said.
He presented statistics showing temperature shifts in the area. While the peak year for cold season temperatures was 1980, the peak warm temperatures recorded since the 1950s occur in the last decade. And the number of four-day precipitation events was twice as frequent in the last decade compared to the average for the entire 20th century during the warm season.
