An unexpected explosion
near Narrowsburg
RETROSPECT
by John Conway
July 30, 2010
RICHES FROM UNDER THE GROUND HAVE PROVED ELUSIVE
Long before modern technology revealed the riches of the Marcellus shale, Catskills old-timers held the belief that the mountains were home to huge reserves of oil. Yet history has recorded that their every attempt to extricate that perceived treasure met with disaster, and the promise of untold riches from under the ground has proved as chimerical as the mythical monster.
Attempts to explore the area for petroleum date back at least to the mid-19th century, and all of them have been unsuccessful. Historian Alf Evers wrote in his 1972 book, "The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock," that "during the last half-century the attention of treasure hunters in the Catskills has turned to oil and natural gas. Oil and gas companies, because of their favored position in our tax system can undertake exploration at little cost and they have taken full advantage of this. In recent years they have kept the Catskills in a tizzy. Many a head has been turned when the oil geologists arrive to be followed by options, the sale of shares, and the inevitable letdown as dreams of sudden wealth vanished from one part of the mountains to pop up in another. Yet the mountain people have not given up hope of becoming millionaires via the oil route."
Evers further pointed out that some residents believed that New York City officials have bought off the oil companies to keep them from drilling within the watershed and polluting the city's water supply. But explorations for oil and gas go back well before the creation of the Catskill watershed. While none of these ventures has ever proven worthwhile, some of the undertakings have proved more hazardous than others.
There was an incident at Narrowsburg in 1854 involving a Pennsylvania man, Bishop Potter, and several friends. They observed, as had many others before them, that the water in the Big Eddy on the Delaware River at Narrowsburg often bubbled up vigorously, as if it was boiling. As James Eldridge Quinlan relates in his "History of Sullivan County," Potter and his friends decided to investigate.
Quinlan writes, "They found that the bubbling and boiling was caused by the escape of an inflammable gas from the bed of the river. By a simple contrivance, they collected the gas and burnt it, and found that it afforded a steady and brilliant light. One of their experiments had a ludicrous termination.
"They procured a hogshead, removed one of its heads, and inserted a lead pipe in the other. They next put the open end of the hogshead over a place where there was a great uprising of gas, and got a man to stand on the other end to keep the vessel stationary. After waiting a proper time, fire was applied to the farther end of the pipe, when there was an unexpected upheaval of the hogshead and the man who stood upon it. The gas had exploded, throwing both several feet into the air."
In 1865, a company was formed to deep-bore that area of the Delaware, but no oil was ever found. It was long believed that the gas in that part of the Delaware was caused by the decaying of vast amounts of underwater vegetation.
In 1866, Thomas Martin, a geologist and mining engineer, created quite a stir in Sullivan County with his assertion that there were vast reserves of oil in the Town of Forestburgh.
Martin's explorations involved an area of Forestburgh then called Oakland (now Oakland Valley) and a natural phenomenon known as "the Gulf-stream," which Quinlan described as "an outlet of a natural pond situated on the mountain at the source of the brook. The canyon is narrow, and its sides are composed of high and perpendicular walls of rock. For a considerable distance the water disappears below the debris, and at a particular point, far beneath the wall of rock may be heard a subterranean waterfall."
Quinlan writes that Martin reported "he found a small seam of coal, traces of copper, positive indications of petroleum, and a valuable deposit of clay. The latter, he declared, was literally saturated with oil."
As a result of Martin's report, a group of local investors formed the Oakland Oil Co., with Lewis Cuddeback as president, H.H. Hunt as vice president, M. Lewis Clark as secretary and Jacob May as treasurer.
Trustees included O.J. Brown, E.A. Bunn, Dr. Lewis Armstrong, Osmer B. Wheeler and D.C. Dusenberry. These were the most prominent and successful men in the area at that time. Wheeler, for instance, had served as state senator and had given Oakland its name.
Despite deep borings over the next few years and the insistence of chemists that "there is petroleum not only far down in the interstices of the rocks, but that the clay of the valley is impregnated with it," no oil in any practical quantity was ever found. The Oakland Oil Co. was dissolved after just a few years, leaving investors in financial shambles. For them, as with the other oil speculators throughout local history, wealth from under the ground remained an elusive chimera.
John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. He can be e-mailed at jconway52@hotmail.com.
******
Most of the Lenape farmers
were women
HARD WORK AND KNOW HOW ENABLED FARMERS TO MAKE A LIVING
by John Conway
July 30, 2010
Though it never achieved the status of timber, tanning, or tourism—or even bluestone quarrying for that matter—farming has always been an important industry in Sullivan County.
The Native American Lenape tribe depended upon farming, along with hunting and fishing, for survival. Interestingly, among the Lenape, the women did most of the farming, though the arduous task of harvesting was often left to the men. The Lenape grew mostly corn, beans and squash, often referred to as the three sisters of Native American agriculture.
There was a reason for this: The tribe’s survival depended upon the success of their annual crop, so they developed a system they called companion planting. In order to get the highest yield of beans possible, the vines needed tall poles on which to grow, so the beans were planted next to the corn, and the tall stalks were perfect for the climbing vines. In turn, the bean’s roots captured nitrogen from the air, and enriched the soil, which was ideal for the corn.
So the two crop thrived together, much more than they would have if planted apart. And, with the planting of the third sister, squash, the system became truly ingenious. The squash plants sent out long, winding vines close to the ground, and had very large leaves, so they were planted in between the rows of corn and beans to act as ground cover, to keep the weeds away and to provide shade for the corn's shallow roots. They also helped keep the ground moist, which helped the beans grow, which helped the corn grow higher, which made for longer bean vines, and so on.
Many European settlers here farmed for survival as well, even as the county’s economy was being fueled by the burgeoning timber and tanning industries. By 1855, there were 125,489 acres of farm land under cultivation in Sullivan County. In 1880, records show there were 4,394 farms in the county, with the average farm comprising 107 acres. By 1890, the number of farms had decreased to 4,096, but the average size of a farm had increased slightly to 112 acres. In 1900 there were 3,887 farms averaging 123.2 acres.
By 1940 there were just 2,778 farms averaging 91.5 acres each.
Although there were many other types of farms, dairy farms were typically the most productive farms in Sullivan County. When the O&W Railway railroad began operating regular milk trains from the county to the New York metropolitan area in 1879, a typical trip consisted of 27 stops in Sullivan, and the shipment averaged 250 of the standard 40 gallon cans. When the Sullivan County Milk Association was formed in 1880, there were an estimated 2500 dairy cows producing in the county, and by the following year, production had increased to 17,430 cans per week, in addition to 165 cans of condensed milk, and 311 cans of cream. By 1901, the county was shipping 9 million cans of milk on the railroad annually.
Dairy farming remained big business in the county as long as the railroad operated. For example, in 1940 there were 26,271 cattle in the county over the age of three months. Most of these were dairy breeds, with Holstein-Friesian the most popular, followed by Ayrshire and Guernsey. During the preceding year, there were 9,443,357 gallons of milk produced in the county, of which 7,569,283 gallons were sold as fluid milk, generating $1,286,778 for farmers.
Chicken farms were also important, particularly toward the middle of the 20th century. During 1939, for instance, $925,464 worth of poultry and poultry products were sold by Sullivan County farms. There were 742,764 chickens raised in the county, of which 422,640 were sold alive or dressed. In addition, 3,169,942 dozen eggs were produced in Sullivan County. White Leghorns were the most popular birds, with New Hampshire Red and Plymouth Rock flocks also kept.
There have been other animals raised commercially in Sullivan County over the years, including sheep, horses, and even chinchillas. The scope of these operations varied greatly over the years, as evidenced by the fact that in 1845 there were nearly 20,000 sheep in the county, but by 1940 that number had declined to 507.
Apples were long grown commercially in the county, and at one point it was reported that Sullivan shipped apples to every state in the country except Washington. For a time, cauliflower, long a commercial crop in neighboring Delaware County, was grown here, as well.
Despite the statistics, farming in Sullivan County has never been easy. Rocky, infertile soils have long been common, and it took incredibly hard work and know-how to enable farmers to make a living here, whether raising animals or growing crops. A soil survey report in 1940 indicated that “as in New York State as a whole, so in Sullivan County a deficiency of available phosphorous is the primary cause of the poverty and low productivity of the pasture land. The soils of Sullivan County are highly acid and would require the application of 2,000 to 4,000 pounds of ground limestone an acre to insure a satisfactory growth of red clover.
Nitrogen was also typically deficient in the pasture soils of the county, but fortunately farmers did not immediately invest in expensive nitrogenous fertilizers to rectify that. Through experience they learned that many pastures contained wild white clover, a plant capable of supplying all of the nitrogen required, as long as satisfactory conditions for its growth were provided. Commercial fertilizers were thus kept to a minimum.
Although it does not yet rival the scope it once attained here, farming appears to be making a comeback in Sullivan County, with more and more small, mostly organic or even biodynamic, farms in operation each year.
John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. He can be reached by e-mail at jconway52@hotmail.com .
