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Catskill Mountains
Range
Slide Mountain and the peaks around it as seen from Twin Mountain in the northern Catskills.
Country	United States
State	New York
Region	Hudson Valley
Counties	Delaware, Greene, Schoharie, Sullivan, Ulster
Borders on	Poconos, Shawangunk Ridge, Hudson Valley, Great Appalachian Valley, Mohawk Valley
Communities	Ellenville, Fleischmanns, Hunter, Liberty, Margaretville, Monticello, Palenville, Phoenicia, Shandaken, Shokan, Tannersville, Wawarsing, Windham, Woodstock
Highest point	Slide Mountain
- elevation	4,154 ft (1,266 m)
- coordinates	41°59′55″N 74°23′11″W / 41.99861°N 74.38639°W / 41.99861; -74.38639
Length	111 mi (179 km), N/S
Width	102 mi (164 km), E/W
Area	15,259 km2 (5,892 sq mi)
Geology	Sedimentary
Period	Devonian, Mississippian
Map of the main regions of the northeast Appalachians, with the Catskills as "C".

The Catskill Mountains are a large area in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York. They are located approximately 100 miles north-northwest of New York City and forty miles southwest of Albany, starting just west of the Hudson River. The Catskills occupy much or all of five different counties (Delaware, Greene, Schoharie, Sullivan, and Ulster). As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas close to or within the borders of the Catskill Park, a vast forest preserve protected from many forms of development under New York state law.

Geologically, the Catskills are a mature dissected plateau, a once-flat region subsequently uplifted and eroded into sharp relief by watercourses. The Catskills form the northeastern end of, and highest-elevation portion of, the Allegheny Plateau (also known as the Appalachian Plateau).^[1][2] Although the Catskills are sometimes compared with the Adirondack Mountains further north, the two mountain ranges are not geologically related, as the Adirondacks are a continuation of the Canadian Shield. Similarly, the Shawangunk Ridge, which forms the southeastern edge of the Catskills, is part of the geologically distinct Ridge-and-Valley province, and is a continuation of the same ridge known as Kittatinny Mountain in New Jersey and Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania.

Climatically, the Catskills lie within the Allegheny Highlands forests ecoregion.

The Catskills are well known in American culture, both as the setting for many 19th-century Hudson River School paintings and as the favored destination for Jewish vacationers from New York City in the mid-20th century. The region's so-called "Borscht Belt" resorts gave countless young stand-up comedians an opportunity to hone their craft. In addition, the Catskills have long been a haven for artists, musicians, and writers, especially in and around the town of Woodstock.

Geography[link]

At the eastern end of the range, the mountains begin quite dramatically with the Catskill Escarpment rising up suddenly from the Hudson Valley. The western boundary is far less certain, as the mountains gradually decline in height and grade into the rest of the Allegheny Plateau. Nor is there a consensus on where the Catskills end to the north or south, with it being certain only that by the time one reaches either I-88, the Delaware River or the Shawangunk Ridge that one is no longer in the Catskills.

In these peripheral regions, whether you are in the Catskills seems to be a matter of personal preference, as an old saying in the region seems to suggest — "When you have two rocks for every dirt, you are in the Catskills."

Many visitors, including owners of weekend or vacation homes in the region, seem to consider almost anything sufficiently rural west of the Hudson yet within a short drive of New York City to be in the Catskills.

The Poconos, to the immediate southwest in Pennsylvania, are technically a continuation of the Catskills under a different name. The Catskills contain more than thirty peaks above 3,500 feet and parts of six important rivers. The highest mountain, Slide Mountain in Ulster County, has an elevation of 4,180 feet (1,274 m).

Within the range is the Catskill Park, part of New York's Forest Preserve. Not all the land is publicly owned; about 60% remains in private hands, but new sections are added frequently. Most of the park and the preserve are within Ulster County; however Greene County accounts for a significant portion as well and there are areas in Sullivan and Delaware counties too.

Geology[link]

Kaaterskill Falls on Spruce Creek near Palenville, New York. One of the higher falls in New York. Two separate falls total 260 ft (79 m)

The history of the Catskill Mountains is a geologic story come full circle, from erosion, deposition and uplift back to erosion. The Catskill Mountains are more of a dissected plateau than a series of mountain ranges. The sediments that make up the rocks in the Catskills were deposited when the ancient Acadian Mountains in the east were rising and subsequently eroding. The sediments traveled westward and formed a great delta into the sea that was in the area at that time.

The escarpment of the Catskill Mountains is near the former (landward) edge of this delta, as the sediments deposited in the northeastern areas along the escarpment were deposited above sea level by moving rivers and the Acadian Mountains were located roughly where the Taconics are located today (though significantly larger). The further west you travel, the finer the sediment that was deposited and thus the rocks change from gravel conglomerates to sandstones and shales. Even further west, these fresh water deposits intermingle with shallow marine sandstones and shales until the end in deeper water limestones.

The uplift and erosion of the Acadian Mountains was occurring during the Devonian and early Mississippian period (395 to 325 million years ago). Over that time, thousands of feet of these sediments built up, slowly moving the Devonian seashore further and further west. A meteor impact occurred in the shallow sea approximately 375 mya creating a 10 km (6 mi) diameter crater. This crater eventually filled with sediments and became Panther Mountain through the process of uplift and erosion.

By the middle of the Mississippian period, the uplift stopped and the Acadian Mountains had been eroded so much that sediments no longer flowed across the Catskill Delta.

Over time the sediments were buried by more sediments from other areas until the original Devonian and Mississippian sediments were deeply buried and slowly became solid rock. Then the entire area experienced uplift, which caused the sedimentary rocks to begin to erode. Today, those upper sedimentary rocks have been completely removed, allowing the Devonian and Mississippian rocks to be exposed. Today’s Catskills are a result of the continued erosion of these rocks, both by streams and in the recent past by glaciers.

Platte Clove, a break in the Escarpment created by glacial action.

Some traces of the most recent sedimentary layers remain for the discerning eye to discover, however. Even along the glacially-scoured eastern escarpment and in the upper Hudson Valley just below it—not to mention the glacial till-dumps and occasional terminal moraines of the southern-facing mountain slopes and valleys of the eastern and central Catskills—fragments of quartzite ranging from bright white, banded orange and tan, to deep red and dark gray are found. Many if not most of these are no more than 6" thick, have two flat sides and are without inclusions of other native rock, e.g., gray or blue sandstone ("bluestone"), most likely indicating the presence of a shallow, wave-beaten sandy delta or beach area at the base of the Acadian ranges in the delta's final stages of sedimentation. That sand layer, mostly free of silt (hence less opaque than older layers formed with higher concentrations of silt and mud under deeper water at more remote reaches of the delta) formed one or more upper layers of the delta. With compression and time, thin layers of sandstone formed of which only the here-mentioned fragments of sandstone remain now though in comparative abundance, if one measures their frequency against those of glacial erratics of similar size and shape which are typically metamorphic in origin (e.g., feldspars, granites, basalts), which most likely originated in the geologically complex region of the Adirondacks to the north. Such sandstones and erratics are frequently found collocated in cairns and other anomalous rock arrangements of the Eastern Catskills.

In successive Ice Ages, both valley and continental glaciers have widened the valleys and the notches of the Catskills and rounded the mountains. Grooves and scratches in exposed bedrock provides evidence of the great sheets of ice that once traversed through the region. Even today the erosion of the mountains continue, with the region’s rivers and streams deepening and widening the mountains’ valleys and cloves.

Transportation[link]

From 1872, the Catskills were served by the Catskill Mountain Branch of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad which was absorbed into the New York Central railroad in 1932. Passenger rail service continued until 1954. Part of the line still exists but now serves only freight.

The Catskills are accessible by automobile from the east along Interstate 87, part of the New York State Thruway, which runs north-south through the Hudson Valley. To the south and southwest, the Catskills are accessible by a variety of highways, including New York State Route 55, U.S. Route 44, U.S. Route 209, and New York State Route 17 (also known as "Future I-86"). Access to the western Catskills is provided by New York State Route 30; and the vaguely defined far-western edge of the region is variously considered to be New York State Route 10 or Interstate 88, though this boundary remains a matter of local preference. New York State Routes 28 and 23A cut east-west through the heart of the Catskills, serving many of the most popular outdoor tourist destinations. New York State Route 23 runs east-west across the Catskills' far-northern section.

The closest major airports to the Catskill region are Albany International Airport to the north and Stewart International Airport in Newburgh to the south. Smaller airports in the region include the following:

• Kingston-Ulster Airport
• Randall Airport in Middletown
• Kobelt Airport in Wallkill
• Wurtsboro-Sullivan County Airport
• Joseph Y. Resnick Airport in Ellenville
• Columbia County Airport in Hudson
• Sullivan County International Airport in Monticello
• Dutchess County Airport in Poughkeepsie

Name[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Views of the Catskills from the Hudson like this led to the name "Blue Mountains" for a time.

The name "Catskills" did not come into wide popular use for the mountains until the mid-19th century — in fact, that name was disparaged by purists as too plebeian, too reminiscent of the area's Dutch colonial past, especially since it was used by the local farming population. It may also have been a continuation of the British practice, after taking possession of the colony in the late 17th century, of trying to replace most Dutch Knickerbocker toponyms in present-day New York with their English alternatives. The locals preferred to call them the Blue Mountains, to harmonize with Vermont's Green Mountains and New Hampshire's White Mountains. It was only after Washington Irving's stories that Catskills won out over Blue Mountains, and several other competitors.

A 1656 map of New Netherland showing the locations of the Lands of the Kat Kills and the High Lands of the Esopus

Nicolaes Visscher II's 1656 map of New Netherland (left) located the 'Landt van Kats Kill' at the mouth of the Kats Kill (Catskill creek). The region to the south is identified as 'Hooge Landt van Esopus' (High Lands of the Esopus). This is a reference to a local band northern Lenape Native Americans who inhabited the banks of the Hudson and hunted in the high lands along the Esopus Creek).^[3]

While the meaning of the name ("cat creek" in Dutch) and the namer (early Dutch explorers) are settled matters, exactly how and why the area is named is a mystery. Mountain lions (catamounts) were known to have been in the area when the Dutch arrived in the 17th century.^[4]

The most common, and easiest, is that bobcats were seen near Catskill creek and the present-day village of Catskill, and the name followed from there. However there is no record of bobcats ever having been seen in significant numbers on the banks of the Hudson, and the name Catskill does not appear on paper until 1655, more than four decades later.

Other theories include:

• A corruption of kasteel, the Dutch sailors' term for the Indian stockades they saw on the riverbank. According to one Belgian authority, kat occurs in many place names throughout Flanders and has nothing to do with cats and everything to do with fortifications.^{[citation needed]}
• It was named for Dutch poet Jacob Cats, who was also known for his real estate prowess, profiting from speculation in lands reclaimed from the sea.
• A ship named The Cat had gone up the Hudson shortly before the name was first used. In nautical slang of the era, cat could also mean a piece of equipment, or a particular type of small vessel.
• It has also been suggested that it refers to lacrosse, which Dutch visitors had seen the Iroquois natives play. Kat can also refer to a tennis racket, which a lacrosse stick resembles, and the first place the Dutch saw this, further down the river in the present-day Town of Saugerties, they gave the name Kaatsbaan, for "tennis court," which is still on maps today.
• The Mohicans roamed the woods of New England during the 18th century. A Mohican tribe supposedly inhabited the area known as the Catskills today, led by a Mohican chief named Cat.
• When Europeans first arrived in the Catskills, a Native American fort was on the banks of the Catskill. In The Netherlands, the term “Kat” refers to a fortification.