Kaaterskill Clove, Harriet Cany Peale, 1858
Site where painting was done, 2010
The top of the Comeau Hill is remarkaby wet and spongy. Tall grasses thrive. This, long ago, required the installation of a complex drainage system. Just south of the soccer field, where the waters drain, can be seen swampy land where trees have been “drowning” and dying (see below). Farther downhill, along the Saw Kill the water emerge and there slump blocks of soggy earth have been forming and sliding into the creek (above and above, right). Tilted trees give evidence of this instability. All this may be related to drainage system problems.
Route 20 is a fine drumlin field.
Conesville, in the Manor Kill Valley is an out of the way rural retreat, but it hides an Ice Age past. The broad flat valley marks the floor of an Ice Age lake. Learn about this and how it came to form in the May 6th issues of the Hudson-Catskill newspapers.
The evolution of the trees got underway for real during the middle Devonian time, about 380 million years ago. Many of the earliest forests grew right here in the Catskills region. But the evolution of the trees was not an unblemished positive. Trees helped create deep soils which, when they eroded, provided excessive nutrients to the nearby seas. The result may have been an oxygen-depleted “poison sea.”
We are standing at the top of Kaaterskill Falls. The breath-taking scenery here has been attracting visiters for almost 200 years.
But there is another story here, one hidden in the rocks. Take a good look at the ledge at the top of the falls. It speaks to us of an ancient time. Learn about this hidden story in the Hudson Catskill papers on April 15th.
Take a good look at this outcropping of stratified rock. It is just the sort of rock exposure that all of us drive past every day.
But what stories lurk in these rocks, what can we learn when we turn a trained eye upon them? find out in the april 8th issues of the Hudson Catskill newspaper chain.
“fossil” river channel as seen just on Rt. 145 just east of Hogans Motel in East Durham
