“Cabin Rock” in Windham; Robert and Johanna Titus
The Catskill Geologists; The Mountain eagle; Aug. 23, 2019
Have you been reading us in Kaatskill Life magazine? This current issue, Summer 2019, has an article by us that includes a visit to Windham. We went there while researching an article about large boulders that are called “standing stones.” Standing stones are great flat boulders that should, of course, be lying flat on their sides. They aren’t. Instead, standing stones are, as the name implies, standing upright. We were told that there was a good one in Windham, so we went to see for ourselves. And there it was, just west of the Windham Fire Department. It has a name; it’s called Cabin Rock.
But standing stones seem so unlikely; how could such things be? Well, one obvious explanation is that they were hoisted into place by people, perhaps people of a prehistoric stone culture. These things do exist, but mostly in Europe and Asia. Such standing stones are suggested to have served religious or astronomical purposes. This would make our local examples the Stonehenge stones of the Catskills and that would be pretty exciting. Who wouldn’t want this to be true?
Well, as scientists, we are always skeptical of such claims. The late astronomer Carl Sagan said it so well: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” It’s one thing to conjure up an ancient stone age culture but is another to back that claim up with evidence. Suppose any of these standing stones had actually been of cultural significance? That extraordinary claim should be, we think, easily supported by conventional archeology. A society that valued such stones should have left behind the flotsam and jetsam of their culture: flints, pottery shards or whatever. But, in America, such archeology is hardly, if ever, found with standing stones. These extraordinary claims are not even backed up ordinary evidences.
So, are we skeptics right? Well, not yet; there is still a real problem here. It is, after all, an equally extraordinary claim that standing stones were not lifted by people. Now, we skeptics are the ones who need extraordinary evidence. We think we have found it in the work by renowned glacial geologist John Lyon Rich. Rich did extensive research on the ice age history of the Catskills during the first half of the 20th century. He mapped the Windham area and found something called a glacial moraine in western part of town. A moraine is an ice age feature formed when an advancing glacier bulldozes forward a heap of earth. Rich found that a valley glacier had advanced westward through Windham and ground to a halt in the western part of town.
Glaciers have no trouble shoving boulders around, even very big ones. The earth of a moraine is a jumble of sediments, so there is no reason that boulders can’t end up lying at any inclination, including vertical. We conclude that Cabin Rock is simply an ice age boulder which, by accident, was left in a vertical position. No stone age culture need be expected to have had anything to do with this.
The next time you pass through Windham, watch for this rock. And see if you can find another one on your own. But we ask you to respect the right of the landowners here. Take a good look but there is no need to trespass.
Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at “thecatskillgeologist.com.”
