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This is a "vintage" publication format from the "developing" phase of the History Atlas concept. This way of presenting the history content of a geographic setting was later changed from the "page" format to the "screen" format for making dedicated electronic files solely for computer viewing that were interactively connected for doing research. That concept is represented in the final page of this "book" where there is a graphic describing how to navigate the graphic layers.
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A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION TO
Between September 24th and 27th, 1609, Henry Hudson and the Half Moon “rode still and we went on land to walk the west side of the river and found good ground for corn, and other garden herbs, and great store of goodly oaks, and walnut trees, and chestnut trees, yew trees, and trees of sweet wood in great abundance, and great store of slate for houses, and other good stones”.
This was at Saugerties. The “slate” is the bluestone found everywhere in the town from the great bluestone mansion of the Winston Farm to the abandoned quarry location of the Great Knot. The Bluestone environment is the focal point of this introduction to a History Atlas of Saugerties.
The Atlas is dedicated to the many stone houses and bluestone quarries of the Town of Saugerties. All of the stone houses identified in a 2004-2005 Historic Resources Survey supported by the Preservation League of New York State are included. The National Register site of the bluestone sculptural environment, “Opus 40”, joins with the Great Knot to emphasize the sculptural potential of the many bluestone quarries of the town that are located in the plates of the Atlas.
The text of the Atlas is a combination of an “early history” serialized in weekly newspaper articles in 1989 and commentary contributed for the Historic Resources Survey of 2004-2005. This introduction focuses on the physical aspects of the town for those interested in the bluestone and its relationship to sculptural environments. However, it is also a comprehensive introduction to the most other aspects of the town of Saugerties.
The text on maps and the details of the illustrations are much higher resolution then the normal viewing size you are reading now would require, in some cases using ½ point type and ½ mil line widths. T Reader program
This introduction as well as the full Atlas use an innovative approach to graphic information. The information is designed solely for accessing through a computer and the Acrobat Reader.
he used makes these “spots” of information accessible. The “magnifying glass” icon enlarges them up to 6400% with the mouse and touch screens make this task even simpler. Try enlarging the area behind the title at the top of this page to read the names of the mountains and streams and location of the Great Knot.
The illustrations in this ebook are just a sampler. The full Atlas is now up to 6 gigabytes of graphic content and is continually growing. It has the full 2004-2005 Cultural Resources Survey of the Town of Saugerties, the documentation for the National Register historic district and the historic zoning overlay district of the Village of Saugerties, all supported by hundreds of historic photographs, commercial maps and surveys and scores of vector-based interpretive graphic plates.
A computer with the History Atlas of Saugerties in the local history room of the Saugerties Public Library is continually updated and freely available to the public. Installations for personal computers are available.
This ebook format was originally developed to represent the interconnectedness of the Great Knot environment to the broader cultural environment of its site. This was made as a part of a presentation made to the NY Foundation for the Arts in 2005. The format for the History Atlas of Saugerties is now made to fit the wide screen computer standard.
Copyright 2005, Michael Sullivan Smith
A History Atlas of Saugertiesof Michael Sullivan Smith
T H E G R E A T V L Y
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XThe Great Knot
Sketch of Great Knot from position of Web-cam (2003)
WATERFALL
QUARRY CUTS
QUARRY CUTS
RUBBLE MOUNDS
RUBBLE MOUNDS
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SUBMISSION MATERIAL (WORK SAMPLE) FORNEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTSFISCAL SPONSORSHIP APPLICATION:“GREAT KNOT” PROJECT - M. S. SMITH
Michael Sullivan SmithSite Address:1267 Rt. 212Saugerties, NY 12477phone:(845) 246-1204e-mail: [email protected]
CLICK ON SKETCHTO GO DIRECTLYTO PROJECT VIEW PAGES
(This is the first page of anE-book that is a sample ofthe “atlas” component of thismulti-disiciplinary project.)
Photos taken October 29, 2005
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© 2004, M. S. Smith
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Saugerties: Home of the Great KnotThe Great Knot is in the southeast part of the town of Saugerties, New York. Saugerties is on the west bank of the Hudson River 100 miles north of New York City. It is the most northerly town in Ulster County, New York State. Easterly Saugerties borders parts of Columbia County and Duchess County mid-channel in the Hudson. North and northwest it borders on Greene County. The Ulster County Towns of Ulster, Kingston and Woodstock border south and southwest.
Saugerties measures 32 square miles from its eight miles of frontage at sea level on the Hudson River to a 2200-foot elevation on the great escarpment of the Catskill Mountains. It is divided north-south by the Mount Marion Hills, or “Hoogebergs”, with Mount Marion at 740 feet and Mount Airy at 612. The Great Knot is located midway between Mount Marion and the base of the Catskills.
The land form of Saugerties is that of a variety of uplifted strata exposed by a pressing of the Acadian plate from the east against the mass of the Catskills to the west. Glaceral stripping and deposition has left exposed ridges and clay-filled seams. From the east to the west the exposed strata is first of sea bed shales, second of stratified limestone and shale, third of black shale, forth of blue flake shale and finally, fifth, of a hard flagstone called "Bluestone". The flagstone stretches from the Mount Marion Hills westward to the Catskill escarpment, making up over half of the Town's landscape. Major quarrying of these beds for over a century significantly changed geographic features, effecting land use. The Great Knot is formed in and of one of these quarries.
The quarry that hosts the Great Knot is cut into a waterfall on the Washburn Creek. Saugerties is watered from the Catskill escarpment by the Plattekill Creek and its Lucas Kill, Washburn Creek, Yaeger Stream and Saxton Stream tributaries. The Plattekill enters the Esopus Creek which
drains into the Hudson River within the limits of the Town.
Less than half a mile north of the broad Esopus estuary is the Sawyerkill. This enters the Hudson in a series of falls above which it meanders through a large expanse of clay flats formed by thousands of years of beaver damming. The Sawyerkill's source is the "The Great Vly", a welling-up of water that is the only remnant of this ancient activity. The Great Vly stretches north into Greene County.
In the center of the Town is the Beaverkill which drains both sides of the Mount Marion Hills from the center of the Town northward. This enters the Kaaterskill Creek which in turn continues north into Greene County to meet the Catskill Creek and then the Hudson. Its course along the base of the Mount Marion Hills southern extent of the Hilderberg chain traces the melt path of the last glaceral action to effect the Hudson Valley.
Midway along the Town's border with the mountains is the Plattekill Clove. This is a break in the mountain wall where a scenic road travels from the 800-foot elevation of the Hudson Valley to an 1800-foot plateau elevation in the Catskill Sketch of Great Knot from position of Web-cam (2003)
Earthform of the Hudson Valley Region of New York State
Earthform of the Saugerties Region of the Hudson Valley
© 2004, M. S. Smith
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© 2004, M. S. Smith
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Mountains in a little over a mile “as the crow flies”. The width of Saugerties is the closest the Catskill Mountains come to the Hudson River and the Plattekill Clove, along with other mountain accesses at the Kaaterskill Clove and at Woodstock, historically connected the farms and industries of the mountain uplands to the tidewater trade of the Hudson River. The Great Knot is positioned adjacent the traditional path of the trade route through the Woodstock Valley.
Centered on the Saugerties' east boundary where the Esopus Creek meets the Hudson River is Saugerties Village (early 19th century "Ulster"). Along with the hamlet of Malden-on-Hudson (early 19th century "Bristol") a mile north and the hamlet of Glasco a mile south these were historically the Town's tidewater ports.
Early transportation routes to these three ports greatly influenced Saugerties' settlement patterns.
The earliest hamlets grew where the mountain traffic met the "Kings Highway", a colonial wagon road running north-south along the east base of the Mount Marion Hills. Where breaks in these hills formed passes, roads were made connecting the upper plateau to this highway and the river. Three of these east-west routes were made into commercial turnpikes by the early 19th century and hamlets grew rapidly along and between them.
The Historic Roadside Site of The Great KnotAntiquarian lore has the 1652 settlers of Esopus traveling from the Hudson at Saugerties to the location of Kingston. This would assume
an Indian path. The first documentation of such a path is found in a 1669 allotment of lands at the "footpath to Albany". The land was where the Plattekill enters the Esopus on the southern border of the present Town. By 1703 this footpath had become the Kings Highway. In this period a "highway" is a bermed, 18 foot wide wagon road.
The Kings Highway linked the Colonies. It is still federally designated an Interstate Road. It ran through the Delaware Valley and Rondout Valley to Kingston, turned north along the Hudson River passing through Saugerties to Old Catskill at Leeds and then from Coxackie north directly to Albany. Between the Delaware Basin and Coxackie it follows the original Lenappe trail linking all the tribes of the Minsis. It is not only the oldest documented roadway in Saugerties, it is the oldest in the State.
For 125 years starting in 1687 Saugerties was part of the Kingston Commons. Over this period Trustee records mention road districts and overseers in the Saugerties area of the Commons. Upkeep of roads was the responsibility of the owners of land adjacent to roads. The earliest transfer of private property rights in the Commons corresponded to lands overlaying roads in exchange for maintenance. The Kings Highway corridor up the center of Saugerties lower plateau was early transferred to private ownership from the Plattekill crossing at Dutch Settlement to Kaatsbaan.
The earliest map actually showing roads in the area of Saugerties is a British map of the Hudson River from the time of the Revolution. It is by the King's geographer and assumed to be made from information of strategic importance. It traces the Kings Highway but also shows a road running westward from it at the present location of State Rt. 212. The intersection is shown at about the Wynkoop House. The name "Sagers" marks the symbol of a settlement there. The Great Knot lies on the route of this early road.
The early 19th century division map of the Kingston Commons gives an indication of actual routes of the earliest roads. Exclusions from the numbered grid of "Class Lots" that marked previously transferred lands generally follow the main pathways of the Commons.
The Route 212 corridor between the Plattekill and the Woodstock border is an exclusion. The exclusions turn sharply down the Plattekill following Powdermill Road. They also run well up to the reservoir and north past the Plattekill bend
The Historic Wagon Roads and Turnpikes of the Town of Saugerties
The Great Knot
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Mount Marion
Glasco
Plattekill
Saxton
Manorville
West Saugerties
Pine Grove
Cedar Grove
Blue Mountain
Shultis Corners
High Woods
Centerville
Veteran
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Malden-on-Hudson
Glenerie
Fishcreek
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QuarryvilleWest Camp
Eavesport
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Village of
Saugerties
Site Plan of the Great Knot - directions from 2003 survey
into the Saxton Flats. These represent the most direct route of traffic form the agrarian-based population center at Kingston; Powdermill Road/Happy Road/ Blue Mountain Road; to the upland grazing and woodlot areas. The pre-quarry waterfall into which the Great Knot is formed was a landmark on this system of agrarian pathways.
The landscape of Saugerties represents a formidable barrier to road building. It is only after industrialization in the 1830's and a transfer of the center of population from Kingston to the Village of Saugerties that commercial traffic made improving roads profitable. It is noteworthy that there are no exclusions on the earlier Kingston Commons division map following the course of Rt. 212 from the Kings Highway through Veteran and Centerville. It is likely that the steep ridge there made the grade impractical before the Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike (Rt. 212) constructed a passable roadway after 1830.
In 1873 New York State removed the maintenance burden from adjacent property owners and made roads the responsibility of towns through property taxes. The 1875 Beers Atlas shows the first accurate road map of these town roads in Saugerties. The 1893 United States Geological Survey topographical maps also accurately show the roads of the town. After the State Aid statute of 1898 county-wide highway maps begin to be made. On all of these maps the position of the Great Knot is made obvious by a sharp “S” curve or zigzag as the course of the road to Woodstock climbs the ridge and passes the waterfall.
In 1899 the Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike was bought by Ulster County to be made one of the first roads in the State to be surfaced. Straightening and widening of the road at this time left the roadbed hovering at the edge of the quarry and watercourse, halting all quarrying and making the location of the Great Knot into a debris-filled wasteland.
The majority of the roads of Saugerties well into the mid 20th century were walking and wagon routes that still followed zig-zag courses up and down grades. Nigger Road and Powdermill Road, two of these early roads, still exist, undeveloped, right up to the last USGS maps of 1963. The way these follow the landforms and skirt the quarries indicate what the original site of the Great Knot may have looked like.
The Historic Community where the Great Knot is LocatedAt various times in history this location would be described in different ways. In the 1660’s there would be a combination of Indian
and Dutch landmarks. It would have been on the path from the Sagiers to the Ashokan over the Hoogebergs after the second crossing at a waterfall on a vly-backed ridge.
In the 1760’s it would be described as being on the wagon road to the Woodstock Valley in the Hardenburgh lands on the north of the Wolven farm in Kingston.
In the 1860’s it would be described as being on the turnpike road to Woodstock where it climbs the ridge at the house and barn of the Rev. William H. Everett farm in the Pine Grove hamlet of the Town of Saugerties. By this time dozens of farms and dozens of quarries supported a vibrant population and a school and the Lutheran church of the Rev. Everett formed the center of this community.
All of the hamlets of Saugerties were once thriving communities centered around farming, quarrying and manufacturing along with their support of the turnpike trade passing through them. Many still have the clustering of stores, churches, schools and firehouses that identify them. Others have long since lost these unifying features but their identity still survives in their old hamlet name. To a native of Saugerties the Great Knot is in the Pine Grove section of the town.
There are twenty-three hamlets in all. Each has a distinct geographic character related to mid to late 19th century life in the town of Saugerties.
The Centers of the Historic Hamlets of Saugerties
The Great Knot
The Glasco Turnpike (1807) runs through a pass created by the Plattekill Creek south of Mount Marion. At this pass is the hamlet of Mount Marion and further east at the Kings Highway is the hamlet of Plattekill. Now divided by the Thruway, these were once the oldest single community in Saugerties and an extension of the north precinct of 17th century Kingston at “Dutch Settlement” (now Ruby).
The Woodstock-Saugerties Turnpike (1827) runs through a break north of Mount Marion created by the Beaverkill. The hamlets of Veteran and Centerville are at the lower and upper reaches of this pass. These were in the 19th century together called "Unionville" and locally "Tootlem".
Where the Woodstock-Saugerties Turnpike met the Kings Highway was the hamlet of Byrnes Corners. This was destroyed by the Thruway exit 20 interchanges. A remnant of this community is the hamlet of Cedar Grove north of the interchanges on Rt. 32 where a Fire House preserves the name.
The Malden Turnpike (1817) runs through a pass north of Mount Airy with the hamlet of Katsbaan on the Kings Highway at its base and the hamlet of Quarryville at the top of the road's incline.
On the northern border of the Town are the hamlets of Saxton and Asbury. They are farming communities. Saxton is on the flat lands of the upper plateau beyond Quarryville where the Malden Turnpike leaves the town and continues up the Kaaterskill Clove. Asbury (19th century "Trumpbour's Corners") is on the lower plateau along the Kings Highway and is linked to Hudson River traffic through the hamlets of West Camp and Eavesport inland on the Catskill Road north of Malden.
On the upper plateau at the base of the Plattekill Clove is the hamlet of West Saugerties. To the east of West Saugerties is the hamlet of Blue Mountain and to the north of West Saugerties is Manorville. Where the Plattekill Creek crosses the Woodstock-Saugerties Turnpike is the hamlet of Pine Grove. Southwest along the turnpike, where it crosses the Glasco Turnpike, is the hamlet of Shultis Corners (also called "Daisy"). The Great Knot is on the road between Pine Grove and Shultis Corners. All of these hamlets fall in a region of originally cattle farms and later, seasonal resorts.
From Shultis Corners the Glasco Turnpike runs eastward through the hamlet of High Woods, continuing on to Mount Marion. The great
bluestone environmental sculpture of Harvey Fite, Opus 40, is located in High Woods.
From High Woods a road runs along the west base of the Mount Marion Hills through the hamlet of VanAken’s Mills to the Woodstock-Saugerties Turnpike at Veteran crossing the Plattekill at the hamlet of Fishcreek. Fishcreek, also know as Bethel and Russell's Clove (or simply “Clove”), was in a region of bluestone quarrying and gun powder manufacturing.
South of the Glasco Turnpike where it crosses the Esopus gorge below Mount Marion is the hamlet of Glenerie. A small stretch of residences a mile north of where the actual hamlet once existed still bears the name. This community was at the lead mill on the second fall of the Esopus and was removed when the Kingston Road was built.
South of Glasco is the hamlet of Flatbush in a region known as the bluffs or Glasco Farmlands.
All of the communities of Saugerties have played their part throughout its history and together they share in the significant impact the history of Saugerties has had on the greater Region, the State and the Nation.
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Modern and Historic Roadbeds in the Town of Saugerties
The Great Knot
The Historic Geography of SaugertiesSaugerties was significant as a political region ages before the first Europeans.
Its southern area was in the territory of the native Warranawonkong people which ranged to the headwaters of every tributary of the Esopus. The territory of the Katskill people encompassed the drained lands to the north of these Esopus tributaries and included the northern half of Saugerties. The division between these two peoples was a line beginning at the Catskill Escarpment below High Peak, running south through Saugerties' Saxton Flats, turning down the Beaverkill Clove at Veteran and ending on the east at the mouth of the Sawyerkill.
Henry Hudson was filling his casks with water from the Sawyerkill when he first encountered the Warranawonkongs. After meeting Katskills further up the river he spent three days on his return with the highest chiefs of both of these peoples at the Sawyerkill, the place on the river that marked the meeting of their lands. A passage from the journal kept during this voyage characterizes their gesturing to the extent of the lands at their command.
In 1685 when the recent Crown Colony of New York was divided into counties this same location, the mouth of the Sawyerkill, and nearly the same line westward from it that divided Indian territories, was used to define the border between the original counties of Albany and Ulster. This was a line from the mouth of the Sawyerkill westward following the southern corner of Overlook Mountain where the Catskills turn west. At this same time the means of declaring a true north line was established as a surveyed line from the mouth of the Sawyerkill through its source at the "Great Fountain". Thus the aboriginal importance of the geographic characteristics of Saugerties was carried intact into a new era of land surveying, putting Saugerties literally and measurably "on the map".
First, under Dutch rule, then continued under English, all land transactions originated with purchases from the native peoples. A 1667 forfeiture under the Nicholls Treaty, later in 1677 reaffirmed as the Andros Treaty, established at that time the northern extent of the Warranawonkong lands as Tendeyachameck, translated "Flatbush"; the area that today stretches from Barclay Heights south through the farmlands along the Glasco Bluffs. The mouth of the Esopus on the Hudson at Saugerties was made the northern point of this Treaty transfer in an addendum of 1677. The remainder of the traditional lands of the Warranawonkongs north of Tendeyachameck up to the Sawyerkill were stated in this addendum as previously conveyed. With all lands having been transferred within their traditional territory the northern boundry of the new Ulster County was thus the Sawyerkill since all transfers from the Katskill peoples traditionally fell north of this within the area that would be Albany County.
In 1683, with the forming of the Counties, the area between the treaty grant of 1667 and the border was surveyed. In 1687 it was conveyed as the northern boundary of the Kingston Commons Patent. Excepted from this was one patent granted by the Crown that comprised all the land between the mouth of the Esopus and the mouth of the Sawyerkill and back to where the Esopus bends from its southern course to begin its cascades down to the Hudson. This exception essentially deprived Kingston of access to the Hudson at Saugerties and established what would become the Village of Saugerties as an area free of Kingston control.
The real story of Saugerties as a place begins with the Palatines in 1711. Their settlement of farms in lands north of the Kingston Commons and their social and economic relations with both Kingston and Catskill created transportation corridors that exist yet today. Their scattered stone houses to the north and those of the Dutch of Kingston to the south form the landmarks of this Saugerties pre-revolution community. A struggle for influence eventually extended the Kingston Commons claims to land well into the then Albany County and in 1801 a move to establish a firm boundary led to the creation of Greene County and, in 1811, the
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© 2005, M. S. Smith
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Pre-Discovery Tribal Boundaries
Colonial era territorial divisions - 1651 to 1803
establishment of Saugerties as a Township separate from Kingston.
Following Saugerties' formation it entered the life of the broader economic community in the Hudson River/Erie Canal growth period. Its population center on the river became an early site of Industrial Revolution manufacturing of paper and iron. The Village of Saugerties was incorporated in 1832 and the Town's base of agriculture began to support this expansion and that of the newly developing gunpowder, lead and bluestone industries of the Township as these added to the population. By 1880 Saugerties' population was
rivaling that of Kingston and its economic influence had made it a force among all the Hudson Valley communities.
Saugerties’ long reliance on the ups and downs of industry as an economic base made it less influential politically than its population base would have implied. These industries, however, maintained Saugerties as a hub of transportation as it historically transitioned from the river to the railroad to the automobile road and, today, the Thruway. This has kept Saugerties on the map.
The Historic Topography of SaugertiesSaugerties has man-made
geographic/topographical features that span the ages from pre-history to the modern era. These include stone houses, stone boundary walls, early Industrial Revolution manufacturing sites, early roadbeds, early port and River-front infrastructure, bluestone quarries and early recreational and tourist attractions.
Archeological digs in shell middens left extending the size of Glunt Island in the Hudson River date to near 9,000 years in the past.
The more recent landscape of Saugerties is layered with the handiwork of more recent past generations. Hundreds of straight stone walls running survey lines northwest toward the great face of
Overlook Mountain and northeast paralleling the east base of the mountains mark the division lots of the Kingston Commons. These have stood since the first decades of the nineteenth century.
There are over 60 stone houses in Saugerties from the earliest 23 foot square frontier settler’s fortified cottages to the two story post-Revolution homes of affluent farmers to the mansions of the gentleman farmers of the early 20th century. Nearly all are visible, well maintained representatives of a long prideful heritage.
Saugerties’ many streams have powered a score of mills over the centuries. The engineering feat of the remains of the 1826 Barclay dam/raceway and mill site shares a heritage with the sawmills and gristmills that came 150 years before it.
The earliest colonial road, the 1703 Kings Highway, runs through Saugerties. Its predecessor, an Indian path, is recorded in Saugerties as early as 1669, as the “Footpath to Albany”. Wagon roads bypassing the turnpike tolls used by the general public are still to be found, intact, undeveloped, as the turnpikes and nearly every other road were with the advent of the automobile.
The Village of Saugerties in 1875. The iron and paper mill complex
below the large mill pond dam had been in operation for 50 years
by this time.
An 1832 lithograph of the iron mill built by Henry Barclay in 1827.
The symbols on this bank draft are of the industrial base
of the Saugerties economy in 1863.
Everywhere in Saugerties there are quarries. From the mid 1830’s, on, the best stone for sidewalks and curbs came from these quarries. Every farm and small residential plot had one. The largest, the Clove Quarry, removed an entire hill making the clove that Fishcreek road now runs through. Opus 40, a sculpture created from the remains of one small quarry, is a landmark on the National Register of Historic Places.
Saugerties has a unique shoreline profile. Dredging of an estuary shipping channel, a bed for Saugerties’ famous lighthouse, a jetty to a freight terminal in mid-river and the accumulated fill from the debris left from decades of the finishing of bluestone have extended the shoreline nearly a mile into the Hudson River. This all happened during Saugerties’ industrial period in the mid to late 19th century. Earlier, during the Revolution, the deep channel hugging its northern shoreline was the destination of the British fleet which had planned to support the northern expedition from these shores.
Lastly, the Saugerties of today is known for its horse shows, its ball fields and its many home-grown festivals that blossomed out of the Woodstock Festival it hosted in 1994. But there remains still the remnants of the bike path that followed the Esopus from the Village to the Glennerie falls and the calm waters of the Esopus Gorge where sculling clubs once rowed. In the late 19th Century these were what attracted day visitors to come on the steamers specifically to relax and revigorate. This was the Saugerties that also inspired the painter and the poet. This is the Saugerties that hosts the Great Knot.
Saugerties LighthouseAs the traffic to the mills at Saugerties grew in
the 1830’s a lighthouse was built in the middle of the Hudson for navigating around the Esopus outlet. The current restored lighthouse dates
from 1869 and is now accessible over land built out to it from material dredged from the harbor.
Winston FarmWinston Farm, in the first half of the 20th century famous for its Guernsey breeding stock and its world renowned
owner, the Ashokan Reservoir engineer J. O. Winston, was the site of the 25th Anniversary Woodstock Festival in 1994.
In centuries past it was the site of one of the first patents granted in the Town of Saugerties and was for over a
century the large farm of the influential Wyncoop family.
Esopus BendEsopus Bend is the location of the homestead of
the first recorded settlers in Saugerties: John and Hannah Wood, (before) 1687. A wagon
road passed their home here in 1705 and crossed the Esopus at a ford above the falls at Stony Point. The falls and the home site were
flooded by the Barclay Dam in 1825.
VeteranIn 1831 Silas Brainard quarried Bluestone from a ledge on the farm of William VanValkenberg in what is now Veteran. The cut Bluestone house that still stands there may have been built by
VanValkenberg years earlier. Brainard bought his farm and commenced the commercial quarrying
of Bluestone that inaugurated the industry.
GlascoGlasco is one of the earliest hamlets of
Saugerties. It was created as a terminus of the Ulster and Delaware Turnpile. It is named after the sign for a Glass Company in Woodstock on its docks. It is located at a river access slope that Henry Hudson likely climbed for his visit with
local Indians at their village in 1609.
Mount MarionMount Marion is the highest point on the
Hoogebergs. The geological strata that underlays the Hoogebergs is known as the Mount Marion
Formation. It separates the limestone front of the Hudson Valley from the Bluestone base of the
Catskill Mountains.
Glasco TurnpikeThe Ulster and Delaware turnpike linked
the Hudson River to the Susquehanna River in 1801. It divided at Shandaken with the
Glasco Branch serving wharves directly on the river north of the Roundout at Kingston.
Barclay’s PondIn 1825 Henry Barclay bought all the land on both sides of the Esopus Creek from where it turns east to the Hudson River. Over thee next year he built a dam flooding back to cover the falls at Esopus Bend and directed the pressure
of this mill pond to sites on the tidewater level of the Hudson River. By 1827 his papermaking factory was producing the first machine made paper in America.
Cantine FieldsThe Cantine paper finishing mill was a major
employer in the village for over half of the 20th century. Martin Cantin’s Valley Farm
encompassed much of the land to the north of the village and a large portion was gifted to the
Town for recreation fields.
Saugerties VillageThe Village of Saugerties was incorporated as
“Ulster” in 1832. It was a center of commerce on the Hudson River before the Revolution but
grew rapidly in population after Henry Barclay developed the water power and introduced
industries in 1826.
Platte CloveThe road up Platte Clove retains the same
character as the mountain access roads of the 18th and 19th centuries. Its unspoiled wilderness
setting, scenic waterfalls and ravines remain inspirations to artists and writers now just as
they did Durand and Lanman at the founding of the Hudson River School of painting.
Huckleberry PointHuckleberry Point is a projection above the
Platte Clove at the edge of the Catskill escarpment where the Hudson Valley was observed during the American Revolution
by Indian raiding parties from the Tory Fort at the headwaters of the Schoherie Creek.
Catskill High PeakCatskill High Peak is the highest point on the
eastern range of the Catskill Mountains. It is the central focus of the Wilderness Area that covers the escarpment between the Plattekill and the
Kaaterskill Cloves. Recreational hiking and snowmobiling trails encircle the mountain top.
Lucas KillThe Lucas Kill forks drain a great bite in the Catskill wall and join to flow through the slide field at its base and unite with
the Plattekill Creek just above the Saugerties Reservoir.
Saxton FlatsThe Saxton Flats are a rich expanse of farmland
overlaying a deep formation of gravel fill left when the westward moving front of the last great glacier rode over the escarpment of the Catskill Mountains. This filled valley collects
all the drainage from the mountain runoff which surfaces where the bowl terminates at
the Bluestone ledges of Blue Mountain.
Kaaterskill Vly LandsOnce the Kaaterskill Creek has reached the
bottom of the Kaaterskill Clove at Palenville it disappears to resurface once again just before its decent through the Hoogebergs toward the
Hudson. A hidden ridge separates the saturated bowl of the Kaaterskill from an equal formation
south of it underlaying the Saxton Flats.
Kaatsbaan ChurchThe Kaatsbaan Church is the first expansion of the Dutch Reformed Church beyond its center
in Kingston. It is a fixture on every map of colonial America. It is located on the meeting spot of the Palatines and called the Kaatsbaan
because it was where the Indian population had also met to play ball games.
Trumpbour HomesteadThe stone house of the Trumpbours was built in the 1730’s and every generation
since has lived there. The complete Trumpbour farm is listed on the National
Register of Historic Places.
Great VlyThe Great Vly is a large body of shallow waters
that is the remains of an ancient Beaver Meadow tens of thousands of years old. The long clay
flats that stretch south of it are part of the same land form. The Sawyerkill once flowed from its pressure outlet at the Great Fountain before the
quarrying limestone lowered the water.
West CampWest Camp is the general settlement location on
the west side of the Hudson River of the Palatines that were given refuge from persecution in the New World by Queen Ann in 1710/11. There
were four original villages on what was the 732 acre Fullerton Patent but the exact locations of
these have never been excavated.
Wonton IslandWonton Island was the site of a decisive battle between the Mahican and the Mohawk Indians
in 1614 and was the locating feature of the Fullerton Patent where the Palatines were
settled. It currently marks the northern boundary of Saugerties and Ulster County.
Location of the Great FountainThe Great Fountain, a fresh water spring, was an important location relative to early colonial surveys of patents. A line of sight between the
mouth of the Sawyerkill and the Great Fountain marked a “true north” bearing.
Eaves PointIn an 1803 map Eaves Point is labeled
Lockermans Haven. This is likely a reference to Govert Lookermanns who traded with the Indians here to avoid tresspassing into
the Van Rensselaer Patroonship.
Malden TurnpikeAsa Bigelow built the Malden Turnpike in the early 1820’s to link his wharfs on the Hudson to the tanneries in Tannersville and Hunter in the Catskills. After the Bluestone quarries at Quarryville opened the turnpike became a
main transport route for this growing industry.
Malden-on-HudsonIn 1812 Asa Bigelow incorporated the Village of Bristol on the northern edge of the DeWolven
patent which he bought in 1808.With a store and wharves into the deep water channel of the
Hudson, Bristol became a center of commerce, changing its name to Malden-on-Hudson to
become the site of a post office.
The Historic Landscape of SaugertiesThe birds eye view drawing of the Town of Saugerties was
done in 1990 as part of a campaign to encourage the adoption of a Zoning Ordinance and a Master Plan for Saugerties. It was printed for the Town as promotional
handouts and made into a colored screen printed display on clear plexiglass for mounting outdoors. The printed
maps were never distributed and the screen printed display was lost for two years. The art for the map made into Xerox copies was taken to Russia in 1990 and used as a gift as part
of a cultural exchange just before the fall of the Iron Curtain.
At the time of the Woodstock Festival the recovered display was mounted on a small building purchased for showing it as part of a visitors center. This was done privately without
any involvement of the Town. When the Festival period came to an end the visitor’s center with the display was
donated to the Businessmen’s Association and has been at the entrance of the McDonalds restaurant parking lot ever since. A companion display never colored is located in the window of the Book Trader on Main Street in Saugerties.
Mount AiryAn observation tower atop Mount Airy in the heyday of Saugerties as a tourist destination was representative of the allure of its scenic
overlooks in the 1880’s.
Sawyerkill OutletThe mouth of the Sawyerkill on the Hudson
River was the division point between the original counties of Ulster and Albany when they were
first created in 1685. A due west line dividing the two would have put Main Street in the Village and everything north of it in Albany County.
QuarryvilleShortly after commercial quarrying of Bluestone got its beginnings on the route of the Woodstock
and Saugerties Turnpike in 1832, Quarryville opened on the Malden Turnpike. By the 1880’s
over 600 would be employed between the quarries here and the finishing yards of Malden.
Plattekill MountainA carriage road between the Overlook
Mountain House and the Catskill Mountain House with continuous views from Plattekill Mountain was a favorite excursion route for summer resort visitors throughout the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th.
Saugerties ReservoirThe Saugerties or Blue Mountain Reservoir is the main source of drinking water for the Village of Saugerties. Though it technically is a damming of the Plattekill Creek, it actually taps the great reserve of ground water in a gravel-filled bowl
the streams draining the Catskill escarpment fill to overflowing at this point.
Shagbark PondShagbark Pond was developed as a retreat for
the followers of the inspirational writer Napoleon Hill just before the Depression. It was originally part of the 300 acre breeding farm of
G. W. Washburn of the 1890’s known for the Shagbark Farm Guernseys.
Shultis CornersShultis Corners, sometimes called “Daisy” is a hamlet at the crossing of the Glasco Turnpike
and the Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike. It was settled just after 1800 with the development
of the Ulster and Delaware Turnpike that the Glasco Turnpike is a branch of.
Overlook MountainThe summit of Overlook Mountain has the longest and most panoramic view of all the
Catskill Mountains. It’s relative inaccessibility kept a resort from operating there until 1871.
The most direct road, the Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike had too much traffic from Bluestone to be attractive to visitors.
Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike
The Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike was built in 1828 and became the main route for Bluestone to reach market throughout the
century. In 1901 it was purchased by the State and made into the first paved automobile road:
State Rt. 212.
The Great KnotThe Great Knot is an environmental sculpture
built into a waterfall on the State Rt. 212 roadside. It is constructed from the quarry
rubble left at the site after the waterfall’s ledge was quarried in the mid 19th century. It is a
continuous 2 meter wide wall built of bluestone interlaced to form a 3-crossing knot.
Opus 40Opus 40 is the world renowned bluestone
environmental sculpture of Harvey Fite. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. It
was begun in the late 1940’s and was continually constructed throughout the next 4
decades.
BethelBethel, now Fish Creek, was the site of the
Laflin and Rand Powder Mill that supplied the Union Army in the Civil War. The community
had extended to the Bluestone quarries that had cut through the hillside by 1880 at what was
called Russells Clove.
PlattekillPlattekill has farms that were Indian
plantations taken over by the Dutch as early as 1669. Landmarks such as “the footpath to
Albany” and a place called “Dead Mens Bones” are words found in the earliest deeds.
FlatbushThe Indian name “Tendeyachemech” means
Flatbush and is the descriptive word for these plantation lands that they thought they were reserving from the 1677 Andros Treaty
but found taken from them the next day.
Turkey PointFrom Turkey Point north to the Esopus Creek
outlet was the Indian lands known as “Tendeyachemach”. The river frontage south of
these lands was ceded to the new English governor Nichols at the end of the Second
Esopus War in 1664. They retained their villages and plantations in Tendeyachemach until 1677.
West SaugertiesWest Saugerties is an early settled hamlet of
Saugerties where water power for mills matched well watered farmlands under the shelter of the mountain wall to provide all the necessities of a homestead. It’s location at the base of the Platte Clove has attracted summer residents from the
1840’s to the present.
Bluestone: The Foundation of SaugertiesThe History of Saugerties can be traced in its stone: that of its settlement
phase in the walls of its stone houses; that of its industrial phase in the mounds of refuse stone from its quarries. The first words written of this place were of its "great store of slate for houses, and other good stones". This was in the journal of Henry Hudson's 1609 discovery.
Stone Houses
For thousands of years the native inhabitants of the Saugerties region tightly stacked their burial cairns of its stone only to ritually remove it and return it to its natural place once the body inside had been returned to the earth.
The Europeans that replaced them had the opposite use for stone. It raised them above the earth and allowed them a sense of permanence. The permanence of their stone houses now makes these landmarks period markers for Saugerties' early history.
This history follows the land. The first stone houses set their foundations into bedrock ledges and raised their walls to match the slope. These are bank houses. They were located over a spring of water that the house enclosed for winter use. They were the houses of herdsmen as the pastureland of Kingston spread northward.
Stone houses were also built along the major wagon roads and by-ways. These are different. They are built on the ground plain and made large enough to act as way-stations and frontier garrisons as well as shelters for the farming family they housed.
The period of greatest activity in stone house building follows the competitive growth of agriculture in Saugerties. This coincided with the disbursement of the West Camp Palatines after 1715. Prior to these homesteads most of Saugerties was frontier. Later, after the Revolution, stone houses were built to provide a show of prosperity and may be found on the more remote farms well into the interior.
These characteristics of placement and appearance help to date a house and this in turn helps to link a particular place to a recorded event. By knowing where our stone houses are located the progression of history can be illustrated.
Stone
The stone has its own history. The earliest stone houses were made of "cliff stone". Chunks that weathered from ridges of limestone and sandstone were plentiful and could nearly always be found in a form dimensionally ready for building. The outcroppings of bedrock at these ridges had been deeply stressed in a nearly prefect north-south direction. The weathered edges crumbled as flat slabs that accumulating at their bases.
Picking through these naturally found flat stones would lead to the founding of an industry for quarrying and finishing perfectly dimensioned stone slabs. This began in 1832 when Silas Brainard was hired to build a bridge in the newly incorporated Village of Ulster, now Saugerties Village. The Woodstock and Saugerties Turnpike was being constructed at this time and Silas Brainard discovered that above Veteran where the turnpike zigzagged its way up the Hoogeberg ridge there was readily accessible the quality of stone he needed for building the bank abutments to support his bridge. A ledge on the vanValkenberg farm thus became the site of the first commercial bluestone quarry and within 30 years the quarrying industry had grown to involve over half the land mass of Saugerties.
Bluestone
Bluestone is a unique material. Its compact composition and the fineness of its surface make it resistant to water and wear. The structure of its beds throughout Saugerties made it particularly easy to quarry. Its naturally-occuring even seams of five to seven foot widths permitted the stone to be split into nearly square,
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Stone Houses, Saugerties, NYLocations of stone houses in the Town of Saugerties.Numbers ascend from earliest to latest.
1. 9.3-5-2 West Camp House (Kocherthal-Ehlig)2. 28.4-10-33 First Brink House3. 28.4-1-31 Burhans/Osterhaudt Inn (Town of Ulster Border)4. 28.4-1-25 Vlykill DeWitt House5. 28.4-1-27 Jacob Conyes House6. 28.4-11-40.100 Peter Winne House7. 18.1-3-16.200 Godfried DeWolven House8. 28.2-3-37.1 Christian Myer House9. 17.2-5-36 Wynkoop House - S/NR10. Persen/Mynderse House (Village)11. 28.4-10-2.113 Second Brink House12
. 28.11-2-20.5 (possible) Mattise Mill House14. 17.4-1-38 Second Schoonmaker Homestead15. 17.4-1-23.12 Aaron and Marius Snyder House - NRE16. 17.4-1-40.100 Old Grower House17. 28.58-1-22 Wynkoop-Schoonmaker House18. 8.4-7-1 Katsbaan Reformed Church19
. 28.4-11-21 Levi Myer House (DeMeyer Grant)21. 40.1-2-16 Jan Osterhoudt House22. 9.1-2-2 Trumpbour Homestead - S/NR23. 17.16-1-1 Martin Snyder Homestead24. 28.4-3-5 Tobias Myer Homestead - NRE25. 28.2-5-20 A. York House26. 2.4-2-34 Schoonmaker-Hoff Homestead27. 28.1-3-13 Plattekill DeWitt House28. 29.5-2-5 Mynderse Schoonmaker House29. 28.1-6-13.100 Hendrick Wolven Farm30
. 8.3-7-5 Abraham Snyder House32. 8.2-6-1 Grant Cole House33. 17.3-3-25 Jacob DuBois House (Mulford Tavern)34. 8.1-3-7 Ralph Vedder House35. 28.1-6-18.181 Jacobus Wolven House36. 9.1-1-19 Comfort Smith House37. 28.4-7-9 R. Second Osterhoudt House (Washburn)38. 28.2-3-4 Second Christian Myer House39
41. 8.4-8-1 Kraft Restoration
. 18.10-4-24 Catskill Road House44
. 9.3-5-20 Dederick Homestead - NRE46. 40.1-2-3.100 Flatbush Reformed Church47. 8.4-8-16 Royal Oaks (Former Katsbaan Reformed Church Parsonage)48. Johannas Myer House (Village)49. 29.3-1-26.200 Edmond Osterhoudt House - S/NR50. Petrus Myer House (Village)51. Lampert House (Village)52. 28.1-6-29 Andrew Wolven House53. 9.1-3-14 Sebring House - NRE54. 9.1-3-12 Dillonhurst55. 28.4-11-27 Plattekill Reformed Church Parsonage56. 17.3-3-27 Jeremiah Russell Turnpike House57. 17.3-5-11.110 Silas Brainard House58. 18.1-2-6 Asa Bigelow Bluestone Company Office59. 28.2-1-41 Echo Hill House (John Lanigan House)60. 28.3-2-13 Old Longindyke Homestead 61. 28.1-2-20 High Woods House (Het Steenen Huis)62. 17.3-2-22 Pine Grove Schoolhouse63. 17.15-3-12 Veteran Schoolhouse64. 18.1-3-16.200 Stroomzeit Carriage Barn65. 17.2-5-40 Winston Farm House - NRE66. 9.3-5-15 Patterson Lane Replica House67. 27.2-8-31.1 Leavitt Replica House68. 28.1-5-37 Tomas Penning house/Studio69. 28.3-5-32 Old Saw Mill Road House70. 18.1-3-17 Stroomzeit Caretaker’s House
. First Schoonmaker Homestead (Village)13
. Dr. Kiersted House (Village)20
. 8.4-7-30.200 Cornelius Persen House31
. 17.2-4-13 John Vaughn House40. 8.3-2-11 Ira Shoub Place
42. 29.3-1-24.110 Otto Goos House43
. 40.1-2-3.2 Hendrick House (Gray Mouse Farm)45
Plate used for locating the stone houses surveyed for the 2004-2005
Preservation League of New York grant.
smooth-surfaced inch-and-a-half to two inch thick slabs. These slabs were in great demand for sidewalks in all the growing cities of the Americas throughout the nineteenth century. In addition to quarrying, a vast manufacturing and shipping economy was created based on bluestone.
The eastern face of a massive five hundred foot thick strata of bluestone surfaces atop the escarpment of the Hoogebergs, a chain of hills midway between the Hudson River and the base of the Catskill mountains. The Hoogebergs expose the front face of the Mount Marion Sandstone Formation of mid-Devonian fossil-rich shales. From the top edge of these hills this formation plunges 500 feet down in a nearly vertical angle, half of this height deep into a sunken valley. The weight of the Catskills has bent the Mount Marian formation at the base of this valley enough to have squeezed the layers of underlying limestone up on edge, exposing them as the ridges that separate the Hoogebergs from the Hudson River. The dissolving of the
limestone base of this sunken valley has made it into one large aquifer.
Immediately above the Mount Marion Sandstone Formation is the base of the Ashokan Flagstone Formation: Bluestone. This strata is also bent upward by the weight of the Catskills. Under the Catskills it slopes from this distorted front edge at the peak of the Hoogebergs down toward the west at a slight angle all the way to the Ohio Valley. Many exposed ridges between the Hoogebergs and the base of the Catskills step their way along a path formed by weathering, the Hudson and glaceral stripping that has taken place over the past 75 million years. The lowest and most dense exposed level of the bluestone is found closest to the Hoogberg ridge. The rest of the total 500 foot original thickness of the bluestone strata is exposed at various ridges up to 700 feet up the steep wall of the Catskill escarpment.
The exposed ledges of Saugerties are the eastern edge of an immense monolithic platform of bluestone that stretches westward into Ohio. It is so dense and solid that when pinched between the Appalachian plate from the southeast and the Acadian plate from the northeast it lifted a mile and a half layer of sandstone above it two miles up on its back to form the continental plateau. The leading edge of this uplift has since weathered down to be the Catskill Mountains with the shallower slope of the western part eroded toward the Ohio River into what is called the Catskill Delta. The steeply eroded edge to the east forms the Hudson Valley.
Where did this bluestone come from? Bluestone was formed over 350 million years ago over a span of 50 million years during a unique period in the earth’s history. It is hard to imagine something forming 350 million years in the past over a period of millions of years. Imagining 350 million years into the future may be a better way to put this into perspective.
Imagine the Alps in another 40 million years rising to twice their present height and the western Mediterranean Sea depressed to a two mile depth. A dense forest grows and its roots make fine soils out of the surface of this great mountain. Muds blackened by burning and regrowth of this forest are carried off over another few million years as the mountain is weathered down. These dry land sediments sink to the bottom of the sea at the mountain's base to overlay and chemically combine with the marine sediments there and become harder and harder under the pressure of the depths. As the finer material on the mountain surface is depleted its rock crags crumble into courser rocks and sands that erode down and cover this first layer, completely filling the sea basin until it is a shallow swamp. The swamp grows its own forest and this in turn is covered
A copy of Alan McKnight’s beautifully descriptive graphic of the
geological base of the Town of Saugerties done in 1985 for an article
written by Spider Barbour on the Geology of the Catskills.
by more sediment over another 200 million years. As this is happening the gradual movements of Africa and Europe are pinching the hardened base layer which is finally thrust along its eastern edge (at the Italian peninsula) raising everything above it two miles up. In another 100 million years the new mountain that has been formed by this uplift is weathered down, the last 75 million years seeing its most bottom layers, originally at the bottom of the sea, exposed by the etching process of a great river that washes away the courser material from along its banks. Over the last 100 thousand years a series of glaciers helps this process by removing the chipped-off surfaces of the ancient layer exposing it in ledges aligned to the fracturing of an outer edge caused by the pressure of the mountain on its back.
That's how bluestone and this landscape of bluestone formed. It was compressed under a mountain of material over a mile and three quarters deep. As the Appalachian Plate slid under it like a great spade blade lifting the once undersea sediments that form the continental plateau upward, a second Plate, the Acadian, pressed against the raised edge of the new formed land bending its deepest underlaying strata up at a steep angle and tilting the front edge of these seabed sediments up two miles to form the Catskill Mountains. This process that involved intense pressure from both above and below, along with the period of its formation during the earliest in the evolution of forests, yielding its organic bonding and color, make bluestone a product of nature that is totally unique and in a way mysterious.
Bluestone Quarries
Bluestone quarrying began on the weathered back slopes of the Hoogebergs at Veteran and Quarryville. It is on the back side of these lower ridges where the hardest and best bluestone is found and where the quarries were most productive. These ridges stretched down through Hallahan Hill and Sawkill into West Hurley to the south and north into Greene County. As the ridges progress higher and up into the Catskill Mountains the upper levels of the strata are found. These are interlaced with transitional elements of limestone conglomerates and mudrocks and finally become all red shales. This lack of uniformity makes the bluestone seams that may be found less productive. The seams of this upper strata have supported quarries as far west as Lake Erie, along the north paralleling the Mohawk Valley and as far south as northern Virginia. Due to the dipping slope of the strata to the west only the most upper level is exposed there. Exposed seams of high quality mid-strata bluestone comparable to the quality found at Saugerties were quarried at the base of the Catskills in Sullivan, Delaware and Broome Counties where they had been exposed by glaciation along the upper branches of the Delaware River.
Bluestone quarries were where seams could be easily uncovered in the land between the ridges. The surface of the bluestone there had been kept wet by water captured under a covering of soil, or overburden. This dampness prevented the natural cross seams or "headers" from forming and allowed larger, more valuable lifts to be productively taken. The size of the lift could then be governed by drilling holes where a break was desired.
In the Saugerties area the bluestone divides naturally into seams that follow a nearly true north-south direction. The seams occur between five and seven feet apart. A quarry often was started a dozen or more seams from the exposed surface of the stone at a ridge edge to avoid naturally formed headers. The area to be quarried was cleared of its cover by blasting away its overburden and removing it in the winter.
Bluestone was quarried as "flagstone" to be used for sidewalks. It was quarried as "edge stone" to be used for curbstones or window sills and headers. And it was quarried as "rock", removed in massive four inch to four foot thicknesses to be later cut to order as building stone, door steps and porch platforms.
The chipped stone from the leading edge of a ridge removed to reach a speculative seam was dumped into large stacks a distance from the developing
quarry over an unproductive part of the site. Waste was also accumulated in stacks as seams were exposed by blasting the frozen overburden. The material from the first broken cuts made to form the header for starting the quarry was also gathered into stacks. Some of the larger of these fragments were dressed for building the many cut stone houses, outbuildings and walls that are found in the areas where the first quarries were started.
Cut stone houses are found near the quarries in Pine Grove, Veteran, above Fishcreek on Old Echo Hill Road and in High Woods both north and south of the Glasco Turnpike. Each dates from the very earliest stage of quarry development. They testify to the skill of the stone cutters at the quarries and the value placed by the owners on the quarries themselves in their building these estate houses of the period so near to the quarrying operations.
The largest by far estate house built entirely of cut bluestone is the mansion house of James O. Winston, the engineer of the dams at the Ashokan Reservoir. This is situated less than a mile from where the first bluestone quarrying began in 1832. The property on which the house is built was bought after the completion of the Ashokan project in 1914 and the mansion house was probably built after 1917 to replace an ancient stone house that had stood on its site for over a hundred years. Winston's house is a monument to a man that may have been the very last of the great quarry operators. The Yale Quarry encompassed an original 4 acres and adjacent lands just to the southwest of the great dam being built over the Esopus at the Ashokan. From the day the project began in 1907 to the last with the building of the great fountain aerators and the administration buildings in 1914, Winston & Company continually extracted and dressed bluestone from the Yale Quarry.
Bluestone Men
Silas Brainard's initial quarry at the site of the present Centerville Methodist Church began a change in the geography of Saugerties resulting entirely from the hard labor of individual men. These are the men that, with great pride, called themselves “bluestone men”. They inaugurated a tradition of skill that would spread throughout the Catskill foothills and would last for well over a century. In slices of an inch-and-a-half they peeled their way through a solid rock hill, changing the course of streams from south to north, making a wide pass between the Plattekill and the Beaverkill that would be known as Russell's Clove. They had begun an equal change to the north through the productive headwater feeders of the Beaverkill when Quarryville opened their attention to its even more productive seams.
There were fortunes made from bluestone before and after the Civil War. The largest were made in Saugerties. Its quarries were closest to the river ports with their finishing yards and merchants. Transporting a slab to the docks may cost only 8% of its value in Saugerties as opposed to as much as 30% if the quarry were in the hills of Hurley or Woodstock.
This transportation created fortunes for the owners of the toll roads to Malden and Saugerties Village over which a steady, almost non-stop train of "Bluestone Boats" passed each other to and from the docks. These roads were specially improved to carry the great weight of the bluestone. Grooved rails called Belgian Bridges were laid the length of the roads to prevent the wheels from sinking deep into the roadbed under the heavy loads.
Bluestone quarrying was an early form of the 1849 gold rush. Shanty towns sprang up around the quarry sites mostly occupied by Irish workers already skilled in hard rock mining as laborers on the Erie Canal. They would later use their skills in A prize cut from a Saugerties Quarry
J. O. Winston’s legendary “Kings Mead” bluestone manor house
in 1954 from a sales brochure and in 1994 after over 30 years of
non-Winston ownership.
the iron mines of Minnesota, the silver mines of Colorado and the gold mines of California but they would make their first small fortune in Saugerties. These were the skilled workers that made bluestone quarrying into an industry.
Most of the productive quarry sites in Saugerties were early purchased or leased by the wealthy merchants of the time; Jeremiah Russell, John Maxwell and Asa Bigelow. These were generally leased back to quarrymen for 5% of the value of the bluestone they quarried. However, some dealers, such as John Maxwell, ran payrolls of up to $3,000 weekly employing as many as 800 between the quarries and the finishing mills. At its peak John Maxwell had a large fleet of sloops, schooners and steamers feeding his company wholesale yards in Rochester, Newark and Philadelphia.
The earliest quarrymen cut and finished their stone goods and carted them to the merchants ready for market. Later quarrymen transported their bluestone to the docks for finishing. This was because of a combination of factors. The first was that they were being paid by weight but it is likely that many of the earlier skills had been lost after every farm and homestead began to mine their acrage for bluestone. This latter development lead to the vast number of rubble mounds and "prospecting pits" found in the area of higher elevations. Most were unsuitable sites producing nothing but unmarketable stone fragments but the number of quarrymen that were working these many sites made each a competitor for a sale at the dock. This rush to the dock simply did not allow time for finishing the stone.
Toward the end of the quarrying era a quarryman working nine months a year was making around $300 annually delivering curbstone and slabs to the docks at about $2 per ton. When a skilled carpenter was making $2.50 a day the average of three deliveries a week with an eight ton wagon by comparison made quarrying a well-paying occupation for the time.
Bluestone quarrying was brought to an end when the principal product, the sidewalk flagstone, was replaced with Portland cement. This opened opportunities for the quarrying of limestone seams along the Hudson River on Saugerties' Greene County border but the making of cement was not a pursuit of individual workers.
Some of the last bluestone commercially quarried in Saugerties was from the York quarry in the 1930’s and used for the facing stone and the columns of Rockefeller Center. This was done during the depression when the National Youth Administration also attempted to promote the learning of quarrying skills and building and carving with stone. Some related WPA projects such as bluestone arch bridges, roadside retaining walls and the NYA buildings that became those of the Art Students League in Woodstock were the last major applications of quarried bluestone in 20th century Saugerties.
The abandoned and unused bluestone quarries of Saugerties are fixtures on its landscape with their angular cuts and smooth surfaces, their clean edged depressions here and there filling with pools of water. After the hundred plus years since the earliest of these quarries went inactive what most dominates as evidence of their enduring presence are the large mounds of quarry rubble that form a highly recognizable landscape element along many of the roadsides of Saugerties.
In the earliest quarries the stone was dressed, or final-shaped for market at the quarry. These quarries will show characteristic mounds of small four to six inch chips of stone. These stacks are rare and if found, valuable. The material is used as drain fill around building sites and for parking lot beds because of a combination of structural size and support capacity. Sometimes the ordinary size rubble finds a use as when some unwise purchaser of land overlaying the sunken valley east of the bluestone hills tries to fill out an area to be firm enough to hold up the weight of a structure. Aside from this the remaining quarry rubble mounds and the stripped quarry land that they mark are of little value. The rural setting they occupy cannot be made to satisfy the requirements of the health code for residential use which is currently the principal means of valuing land in the
town. This has removed thousands of rural acres from the potential of development.
In the late 1940's Harvey Fite, a sculptor with a studio near the York quarry in Saugerties, joined many local artists in carving statuary out of bluestone. Shortly afterward he started to develop his grounds into a setting for display of the sculptures by building pedestals of stacked bluestone rubble that he found in the abandoned quarry adjacent to his studio. At some point in time he switched altogether from the purpose of presenting his carved sculptures to begin an expansive building of this dry-stacked bluestone display setting into an artistic environment in its own right. This is the first known use of stone to structure the creation of an aesthetic environment solely focused on itself and not augmenting or sharing its purpose to a garden or to another functional use.
The site of this environmental sculpture, Opus 40, is tucked away in a remote but scenic area of the town. This was a setting ideal for an artist's studio but not for the international attraction that this sculpture has become. Fortunately, to reach this site one must pass miles of mountains of quarry rubble lining the roads either when approaching from the direction of the Glasco Turnpike or by Fishcreek Road. This has, over the years, inspired in those making this pilgrimage more than a passing interest in perhaps being able to transform their own mound of bluestone rubble into a similar creation.
Thus the spirit of bluestone lives on. In images of Harvey Fite and his Opus 40 there is rarely the artist standing with his work. There is the worker lifting or hoisting the bluestone into place; sharing the stage with the bluestone and the sweat and passion of the ages of Bluestone Men, the quarrymen that wrested from the earth decades before him the material of his artwork.
Fite took this connection seriously. He collected the tools and the everyday articles of period life of the quarrying era and displayed these in a building he made just for them he called his "quarryman's museum".
These activities of Harvey Fite, and his Opus 40, have, by example, placed a value on the quarries of Saugerties. Each abandoned quarry has a productive use. That is: to find a match with an artist who can see in its scattered rubble the makings of a creative work that can express a spirit as ageless as the bluestone itself.
Earthart SculptureThere are hundreds of potential earthart sculptures in
Saugerties. They could take a form from the clay banks of its ancient brickyards. They could follow the long jetties that stretch its shoreline of the Hudson River. They could cut a swath into the steep slopes of its mountainsides. But the most ethical, earth-friendly and unique-to-Saugerties earthart sculpture is one that transforms one of its many abandoned bluestone quarries into a creative expression.
So many of these are waiting to begin. One exists to inspire those, professional and amateur alike, that may be overwhelmed by the grand goals of an Opus 40. The Great Knot is simply a rearrangement of a cluttered roadside desecration into something with a recognizable form that is made to look like it belongs where it is. Its simple goal is to save a beautiful waterfall from an ugly setting: to right a wrong: to pick up the trash. In the end this will become a collaboration with nature to make a continuously changing image projected live to the world on the Internet.
The monolith at “Opus 40”, the environmental sculpture of Harvey Fite
The Great Knot in its third winter of rest from being constructed.
74º02’34”W
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42°04’04”N
The Great Knot - Toward an Earth Art EthicThe Great Knot is found at 42°04’04”N, 74°02’34”W on an acre of land at a
bend in a highway where a level stream breaks as a waterfall over a rock ridge. It is a earthart sculpture whose place there, whose material presence, past and future, is a guidepost to another place, less easily described.
The Great Knot is an earthly representation of an artistic concept that defines an infinitely complex dimensional reality. It is a concept rooted in the illustration of information just like that of maps. From Global Positioning Satellite coordinates to US Geological Survey topography, maps physically and politically describe the fragile and changing reality of earthly places. The Great Knot is but one of these.
As a place the Great Knot is a monumental physical expression of this concept of information. The earliest forms recognized as knot designs are found as artifacts in just about every culture in history. As a symbol the knot embraced an existential concept that represents a way to comprehend complexity. This is expressed through a precise geometry that is capable of graphically defining the simplest to the most complex physical state of an actual object: a knot.
The knot itself is a conceptual curiosity. It is at once capable of physical and intellectual existence. It functions equally as cordage or as a mathematical equation, as a symbol of philosophical complexity or an example of basic structure. The Great Knot is thus planned as an environment for contemplating, in this natural setting, these many and various meanings.
The Great Knot represents a simple understanding: knots are physical when they are tied; knots are virtual when they are graphic plans for knots that can be tied. And it is emblematic of a more complex thought: that the imagined potential existence of an infinitely complex knot can only be considered in a virtual representation: a plan; a concept; a map.
The maps and commentary of this “atlas” focus on the meaning of the Great Knot as a landmark of the two communities it exists in. The GPS coordinates of 42°04’04”N, 74°02’34”W are in a physical place called Saugerties. This is the first community. But Saugerties also is an historical place and this adds more complex layers to it as a physical place. This History Atlas of Saugerties is thus meant to knot and weave these two communities together in a way that is paralleled and complimented by the existence and symbolic meaning of the Great Knot.
The Great Knot is an artwork. The imagination of the artist is the most profound creative component in the human experience. Its incisive character offsets the common imagination, which is often merely a provocative outlet for anxiety. As a site-specific sculpture the Great Knot is meant to be an exemplary function of Art for advancing a social purpose. This purpose is to establish a level of conceptual credibility for a "mitigating purpose" component in the art of the earthart sculpture. The hope is to influence other artists to embrace this as a function of their art and take an active part in directly engaging the ravages of the environment in this way as opposed to merely acting as a commentator on this theme.
Outwardly, the Great Knot is the reclamation of a century-old industrial rubbish heap. It is a welding of a human creative invention with the natural environment hidden within this debris. It is a bold expression of an Earth Art Ethic; a call for more artworks, anywhere, to do site-specific mitigation of the past two hundred years of industrial rampage over the earth; a call for a new beginning marking a cathartic moment in humanity: a new age of environmental husbandry through Art.
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Sketch of Great Knot from position of Web-cam (2003)
Site Plan of the Great Knot - directions from 2003 survey
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42°04’04”N
74°02’34”W
The Waterfall - late fall and early winter, 2004
The Setting Before the Great Knot is Constructed
A waterfall gushes in a double cascade of about six feet behind a quarter acre clutter of stone fragments. A few scraggly trees grip tenuously or lay uprooted and tangled in the flood washing over and through the confusion. Thick scrub spreads a mat of roots capturing any silt escaping the downstream rush.
On the left bank, above the scrub, a bare mound of broadly stacked stone supports the base of an unused power pole. Close behind ragged, lime-leaching cliffs jut out like broken teeth to form grottos where moss, ferns, lichen and embedded roots fill their deep shadows. Atop this tower ancient pines, hemlocks and hickories.
On the right bank looms the source of the wash's clutter. Under sun-bleached carcasses of long fallen trees lay parallel gashes - deep, square scars cut evenly into the primordial bedrock, their bases heaped with mounds of the smooth-faced geometric waste - remnants of a long-abandoned quarry.
The overall setting is that of a quarry forming a three-sided notch cut into the ridge at the edge of a level plateau. Dozens of plateau-backed ridges exactly like this step their way upward to meet at the great escarpment of an ancient mountain and step their way downward as this mountain erodes toward the sea. Hundreds of quarries mark these ridges. This one is rare. Its waterfall is a blatant confrontation of a mountain stream's intransigence in an effort to harvest the stone.
Along this plateau, steadily feeding the waterfall, a long, placid pond with a clear base of bedrock worn as smooth as a well trod floor divides a thick, dark forest of hemlock on one bank from a highway that hugs the edge of the other.
Below the waterfall the stream leaves the desolate quarry gorge to form a single deep cut sliced into the broad, level field of a farm, its pastoral banks sun-dappled by large maples and oaks.
A lane from a distant white barn on the highway crosses the stream at a culvert where the farm field and gorge meet, continues up the jagged ridge and disappears far into the forest beyond.
Long, long ago, before the quarry, the waterfall was closer to where this lane climbs the ridge. The ridge is now notched back over 100 feet to where the present cascade marks an end to the quarryman's interest at an unusable strata of rough conglomerate.
Before the quarryman's chisel, water sculpted its own course through this ridge's fine blue stone. Among what now lay fragmented in the waterfall's wash are broken remnants of that slow, deliberate art. The waterfall's present irregularly eroded edge, directed by a chorus of water spouts that etch through fault lines and frost cracks to form smoothed, sensuous shapes, hints at the lost form from long ago now broken and intermingled among the sharply cut quarry stone in the many scattered puzzle pieces below.
This abandoned and desolate quarry, starkly juxtaposed to a waterfall's natural beauty, daily passed unnoticed by thousands, symbolizes the effect of destruction and neglect on the natural environment and the human psyche. For over a hundred years it has persistently resisted both natural and spiritual renewal. Where man has altered a natural setting his footprint leaves a permanent impression.
This is the setting of the Great Knot.
Before the After... The Plan
This setting, dominated by geometric quarry cuts and bare stacks of debris, so deeply scared by man's most intrusive presence, will never return to its pre-industrial state naturally. What persistently tries, though, is the waterfall. Its soul, its water, does everything in its power to heal its setting. But the weight of the wedged stone and the reaches of the barren cuts resist the force of this water's floods and the nurturing soil it would deposit there. All this great flow succeeds in doing is adding, to the expanding chaos, trash it gathers from upstream.
Opening the project - Spring, 2004
However, this waterfall's natural aesthetic: the rushing and gurgling sounds and the dance of its spouts and splashes with their glistening reflections of sunlight, has a parallel power. This aesthetic power reaches out to attract human intervention. It pleads for a creative footprint to erase this industrial footprint: a human aesthetic to augment its own and redemption of its site through art.
Thus this waterfall and the condition of its setting have become the medium for a planned art project. The plan is for a structure made in and from this abandoned industrial site: a reclamation project. The purpose of the project: where natural beauty has been diminished by indiscriminate industrial intrusion, to apply art as a remedy; to make Nature whole once again by melding Man's creative nature into the natural environment of this waterfall.
Artistically, the plan is that of an environmental sculpture that takes a geometric form. The plan is to integrate an underlying conceptual principle into a man/nature aesthetic through a project that is a nature/art collaborative.
The plan begins by eliminating all ephemeral footholds of nature in these unnatural fields of rubble so this rubble can be reordered to bring about an aesthetic resolution to the chaotic juxtaposition of Nature and Man's nature now here. This "reordering" uncovers and brings definition to the course strata of bedrock over which the fall rushes. It yields the material of a structure that can fit naturally into the seams of this bedrock foundation. It uses the same seams that had once directed the quarryman's cuts and, before that, the water's natural course, to speak like the grain of marble to the sculptor, defining the aesthetic shape, the size and proportions of the structure that will be built here.
The form of this structure is an amalgam of what Nature allows into this environment and the biased, thematic vision of the artist. The vision is figuratively a three-crossing knot constructed by laying a stone wall as a continuous linear movement, two meters wide, curved so as to cross itself. This artwork will be "The Great Knot".
This monumental work fits perfectly into the environment Nature has provided it. One crossing is positioned beside the fall, one below it aside the lane and one over top the grottos. A quarter-circle arced wall segment will descend from the "fall crossing", at the edge of the waterfall, down to the "pond crossing" on the lane at the edge of the wash. The third crossing, the "upper crossing", will be linked both by curved and by straight wall segments to the other two crossings. All of these segments will join together to form a continuous band shaped so as to appear to pass over and under itself. These walls are to occupy a quarter of an acre. The complete environment with the waterfall and pools will be over an acre in size.
The Task... Building the Great Knot
The Great Knot is conceived as a solitary project. The act of excavating and moving the deeply layered hodgepodge of stone shapes and sizes that fill the basin and sides of this quarried ravine and putting them in their place on the structure can only be done in a resolute and contemplative manner. By necessity this work is by hand: the sole unaided hand of the artist.
The process itself is considered an act of reconciliation and this can only be achieved by emulating the intense physicality of Nature's labors. The “labor” of the task is an integral part of this artwork's concept.
There are working limitations to the execution of the tasks. The only tools that
Site Plan - Fall, 2001
Fall - 2004
WATERFALL
QUARRY CUTS
QUARRY CUTS
RUBBLE MOUNDS
RUBBLE MOUNDS
RUBBLE-FILLED
STREAM BED
RUBBLE MOUNDS
ROADSIDE FILL
ROADSIDE FILL
LEVELED FILL WITH
FOREST OVERGROWTH
170’
VIEW
The Artist - Fall, 2004
fit these limitations are those of a human scale. Only hoes, rakes, pry bars, chisels, sledge hammers, spades and wheelbarrows fit into the work area of the majority of the site.
The task is a multi-year one. It was initiated in the Spring of 2001 with the clearing of an entry to the site, and continued until total access was completed before that winter. Excavations at the waterline for the foundations of the lower walls were laid out over 2002. Clearing the bedrock and laying the upper walls
continued through 2003. The entire project had been planned to take three years but the demands the seasons place on the environment of the site steadily extended the completion date.
The forces of nature daily direct the project's work. Winter's thaw, spring's deluges and summer's droughts put scheduled tasks totally at the whim of the distant mountain watershed. This ebb and flow of water, alternately frustrating and encouraging, highlights the essential nature of the task as a collaboration. It is a constant reminder of Nature's active dominance over this creation.
As work progresses, excavating in the rubble unearths mysteries of natural and human history. Deep layers of clay where bedrock is expected are discovered. There is evidence of cutting much deeper than the water level would logically permit. These and other “found” design elements are critical to the sculpture's design. Every ledge, outcropping and the growth they support along with the crisp quarry cuts that step their way down beneath the water surface of the pond are factored into what will be the look and experience of the final product.
One purpose of this environment is to frame the Great Knot as a live web-cam image and continuously feed this image to the Internet. For this the Great Knot, from a camera position at the lower pond outlet, is designed to be unambiguously three-dimensional. To bring this dimensionality to life, the preserved scale and texture of the existing trees and ledges with their changing light, shadow and reflections in the pond adding their effect over the course of the day, along with the action of the waterfall and the changing seasons, continuously change the environment of the Great Knot.
In reaching the goals of the project many difficulties must be overcome. The Great Knot is integrated into a slope that is 25 degrees from its base to height. Its walls ascend the jagged outcroppings of this slope with layer upon layer of hand-laid stone carried up from the streambed below. These walls reach heights of ten feet and more. At the highest level a century of topsoil and root-embedded debris covers the bedrock. This is removed and conveyed away for preparing a firm foundation for the upper walls. Portions of the exposed ledge that visually compete with the sculpture's form are also chipped away and removed. All the while the massive trees that grow at this height must be saved as their fragile root structures are exposed.
Other considerations besides the camera's vantage-point effect the dimensional structuring of the Great Knot. The actual physical experience of it as a place is a part of its design. Restful, contemplative areas are created within and outside of the walls
that offer access to the more intimate views of the Great Knot’s convoluted planes. A shady grotto nested into the jagged outcroppings, preserved for experiencing the natural, un-built form of the bedrock, is one. Another is next to
WATERFALL
QUARRY CUTS
QUARRY CUTS
RUBBLE MOUNDS
RUBBLE MOUNDS
RUBBLE-FILLED
STREAM BED
RUBBLE MOUNDS
ROADSIDE FILL
ROADSIDE FILL
LEVELED FILL WITH
FOREST OVERGROWTH
170’
VIEW
Great Knot Project - Fall thru Winter, 2004/2005
Fall Crossing
Upper Crossing
Pond Crossing
the waterfall where there is a grassy area from which the upper pond, its calm, reflective surface, the deep, dark hemlock-shaded esplanade along its bank, all contrast to the cascading water and descending wall forms that fill the structured space below. Connecting pathways between these areas form a continuous transition between the tops of the walls, the captive spaces and the outside as the walls blend into the landform.
Many functional elements have become part of the structural design of the Great Knot. As the entire face of the bedrock ridge adjacent the waterfall was barred for the upper wall foundation the composition of the exposed bedrock showed signs that the original watercourse prior to quarrying was at this location. This allowed a channeling of water from the pond above the waterfall to be directed diagonally under the “fall crossing” to form a cascade parallel to the waterfall that enters a pool enclosed between the cascade and the lower wall at the pond below.
This pool is where the outlet of a much larger body of water in ancient times drained when this ridge was much higher. The base of this pool is a compact clay material packed to a depth that far exceeds the present ground level. Behind this clay and deep under the bedrock ridge lie cavities where the turbulence of an ancient waterfall must have worked to dissolve layers of limestone that intermingle with the bluestone formation.
The pool is filled once more from above, just as in ancient times. This primordial location is at the geometric center of the sculpture, a feature that was not part of the original plan but only entered it during construction. The circumstance that this pool location was discovered only because of the abnormally dry period that occurred as the lowest foundation here was being prepared to receive its wall is evidence of Nature’s active impact on this project. This pool is the soul of the Great Knot, its central location a controlled component balancing the wild, uncontrollable levels of the waterfall-fed pond before it.
Digging the pool, clearing the surfaces to the bedrock, channeling the pond bed, removing its rubble, and finally building the walls of the Great Knot are all short-term tasks relative to the overall scope of the larger task that Nature brings to this site. It is expected that Nature will reclaim this site. If it does so with a show of respect for the earthart that is built here then the collaboration will be complete.
October - 2005
The Upper Crossing
The Pool
The Grotto
The fall - flood
The Lower Pond and exposed quarry cuts
The Large Arc rising to the Fall Crossing - low flow
The lower pond with fill to be removed
Explaining Saugerties is part of the environmental art project,The Great Knot, of Michael Sullivan Smith, that is being constructed
to promote his larger art concept on knots as symbolic identities...
so Saugerties gets the benefitof
A History Atlas of SaugertiesThe most comprehensive file in the most intuitive form for finding
information on Saugerties... putting the past where it happened using maps and images that are electronically enlargeable and interactive.
if you ever wonderedWHAT ! a Kingston Commons lot is! the earliest survey is in your neighborhood! caused the first settlers in your neighborhood to live there! is natural and what is man made in your surroundings
WHEN ! your neighborhood was first occupied! your neighborhood street got its name! the first location in your neighborhood was photographed
WHERE ! your neighborhood and home are on the earliest maps! the earliest settlers in your neighborhood lived! the school houses of the past were located! the course of roads of a hundred and two hundred years ago ran! the first deed to your home's location can be found! materials for building the earliest structures you see around you came from
HOW ! your neighborhood relates to those surrounding it! your neighborhood was represented on the earliest maps! the land forms around you got the way they are
WHY ! your neighborhood is historic! the first records of your neighborhood
are historic! Saugerties history is so important
These and answers to thousands more questions specific to the history of Saugerties are now available.
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Village Main Screen Town Main Screen
Historic ResourcesSurvey Main Screen
Uptown District Main Screen
Town Historic Map and Image Search Screens
Official HistoricResources Surveys
Official HistoricResources Surveys
South SideDistrict Main Screen
Made for and only available on your home computer Runs on Reader.Always available with current content update to use for free at Saugerties Public Library Local History RoomHelp support the artwork that is the basic reason for The History Atlas of Saugerties by having it installed in your home or business for:
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