The borders of the Catskill Park include the Pepacton Reservoir to the west, the Ashokan Reservoir to the east, the Blackhead Range to the north, and the Rondout Reservoir to the south. At the approximate center of the Park is the Slide Mountain Wilderness Area, the Park’s single largest tract of wilderness. Slide Mountain, at 4180 feet, is the tallest peak in the Park and is also the most popular. John Burroughs wrote extensively about his visits to the Slide, Wittenburg and Cornell range, as well as his visits to "Big Ingin" at the base of Slide where he observed thousands of the now extinct Passenger Pigeon.

In some ways John Burroughs’ life resembled what Catskill Park represents today. Although best known as a writer and a naturalist, Burroughs was first and foremost a farmer. Throughout his life he worked the landscape, whether it was farming, building stone walls, maple sugaring or harvesting timber. But he also recognized the importance of undisturbed forests that provide suitable habitat for species that thrive only where human impacts are minimal. One such species is the Bicknell’s Thrush whose song was described by Burroughs in 1894, "the song is in a minor key, finer, more attenuated and more under the breath than that of any other thrush. It seemed as if the bird was blowing in a delicate, slender, golden tube so fine, and yet so flute-like and resonant the song appeared."

In the same year, Burroughs wrote about the view from atop Slide Mountain, "We saw the world as the hawk or balloonist sees it when he is at 3000 feet in the air. How soft and flowing all the outlines of the hills and mountains beneath us looked! ... All was mountain and forest on every hand. Civilization seemed to have done little more than to have scratched this rough, shaggy surface of the earth here and there. In any such view, the wild, the aboriginal, the geographical greatly predominate. The works of man dwindle, and the original features of the huge globe come out."

Happy Birthday Catskill Park!

Tom Alworth
Executive Director