Saugerties High School - Sawyer Yearbook (Saugerties, NY)

Page 20 text:

The Plattekill Stream Known to Many Today ar the West Saugeftief Stream The Plattekill, which pours down through the clove above West Saugerties, is one of the most precipitous streams in this area. Plattekill Clove itself is a wild and little traveled ravine. It was not until 1905 that a road was constructed there. Today, as this is written, the road up the Plattekill cannot be be traveled by any vehicle. Erosion and rainwater lzave worn parts of it away. In the summertime, however, many tourists travel it-or try to, many a vehicle having come to grief on its precipitous slopes. The stream, and the road, make an ascent of 1400 feet in a distance of one and one-half miles. Only a few, chiefly fishermen, have followed the banks of the stream from the foot of the clove to the top. The Plattekill is the most rugged clove of the more pronounced clefts in the east wall of the Cats- kills available for travel. Halfway up the clove the traveler reache.s the Devil's Kitchen, called by Haring fwho wrote Our Catskill Mountainsnj a jumbled mass of shattered rock. Here amidst the boulders a stream gushes forth to trickle down the northern slope of the clove to add its sparkling spring water to the never-failing flow of the Kaaterskill. At the foot of the mountain, the village of Saugerties catches a part of the Kaaterskill water in its reservoir and diverts it for use for drinking purposes. The name, Plattekill, has an Indian origin mean- ing the stream of the place. Perhaps the place had some unusual significance to the Indians. It may be they regarded it as one of the retreats of Manitou. Or perhaps some unusual accident or conflict oc- curred here. We do know that the Indians respected 161 the Catskills and we suspect their experiences in attempting to travel the Kaaterskill Clove may have added to this reverence. Early white settlers tell of the veneration, fear, and awe in which some Indians held the Catskills. Modern man, for all his troubles, can thank God his mind need harbor no such unfounded fears as the Indians seem to have entertained. Not all Indians, probably, held these fears, for many of them traveled the Catskills extensively and camped there for long periods hunting, fishing, and even planting and harvesting crops there. Both buried and accident- ly lost and discarded artifacts are there in the soil to prove it. After the Kaaterskill reaches the lower lands below the clove, it flows in a southerly direction, being one of the only two streams in this area to do so-the other being the little Sawyer, the Sawkill. I N .. ,il ' ' f 3257 'fl s fi f 1 ' if - 4 af x-Ja I A 4444: l 'Y 6, fly!! H ,mf J N ffl, 'III' I ly V. W la fl - -r1'+.v:-M 2172 'Nl ff' Q -,ff - .ff fm , .- X1 it , a Q .--J' ' f gffk Ai ,V 'i ' I -- b:. , JW-7 S41 . 5531' -:ik ,.... ' 3 'C is 4 - 'Z 3.-ff f ' -

Page 22 text:

J S N E OHIGH vvooos DCENTERVIL LE L ap' ons:-1 CREEK P51 QV O Mr MARION OVETERA !lnluh------ SHORE R R :nu n-unuuq.....Q. s,.ss Xxx CR X Egfr XS, Sxs SAUGERUES , -3... OFLATBUSH 0 G'-ASCO N.,f-x,eJfQ.fQfx.ffJNXf X,-- Xxx. o HUDSON FUVEF4