History
of Greene County
General
Description
Geography, Topography, Soil, Waters, Geology
Extracted from the History of Greene County, pages 15-19
By J. G. Beers, published in 1884
Transcribed by Arlene Goodwin
GREENE COUNTY lies on the west side of the Hudson River, centrally distant 130 miles from New York, and from the State capital 35 miles. The boundary lines are very irregular; that on the north, which is the old south boundary of Rensselaer Manor, being the greatest length of straight line (a distance of about 30 miles) to be found in its perimeter. It contains 686 square miles. The longest line that can be drawn in the county—a diagonal from northeast to southwest—is about 43 miles, while the average length is 32 miles, and the average width 20 miles. Its greatest width is about 25 miles, and it has a front on the river of the same length. The southern part is mountainous, comprising the celebrated Catskill Mountains, which reach a height of nearly 4,000 feet, and can be seen from a great distance. Other parts of the county are very hilly. From the main range a spur of mountains extends through the county in a northeasterly direction, it peaks ranging from 2,500 to 3,000 feet high. This range forms a natural boundary, dividing the county into two nearly equal parts and separating the towns of Windham, Jewett and Hunter on the west from those of Durham, Cairo and Catskill on the east. The eastern slope of these mountains, as well as of the mountains of the county generally, is steep and wall-like, while the western side falls away by a more gradual slope, and in spurs of smaller mountains and hills. The north side of these spurs are rocky and bare, while their south sides are covered with vast deposits of drift, indicating that a great current of water once swept over them from the north. In the western part of the county a spur of mountains runs across, entirely hedging off the town of Halcott from the other towns. The valley on the west of this spur is drained by the Bush Kill; that lying between these mountains and the central range, above referred to, by the Schoharie Kill and its branches, while the country on the east of the latter range is drained mainly by the Katskill and its branches. Clefts between the mountains, through which these streams find their way are called. "cloves" (from the Dutch word Kloff—a cleft, gorge). These in some cases amount to wide valleys, while in others they are narrow ravines, the steep sides of which sometimes rise nearly perpendicularly 1,500 feet or more above the streams flowing through them. The most important of these are Kaaterskill Clove, Bush Kill Clove, Stoney Clove, Mink Hollow and Plattekill Hollow, all in the southern part of the county. The principal mountains lie at the nearest point about seven miles from the river. In front of them is a series of lesser mountains called the Little Catskills, (also known as the Hooge-bergen or High Hills), which rise from 500 to 700 feet, and lie four or five miles back from the river. Between these and the river there are several ridges between which stretch parallel fertile valleys. The most strongly marked and important of these ridges is the Kalkberg, which lies two or three miles from the river and rises in a precipitous wall from 100 to 150 feet.
The soil of the county is for the most part a heavy shaly loam with local variations to sand and gravel. Along the valleys of the creeks there are numerous flats of heavy, fertile soil. On the rough and elevated portions the soil is so stony as to render cultivation difficult if not impossible. This is particularly the case in the towns of Lexington and Hunter. Some years ago Horace Greeley was addressing the farmers of this county and enlarging upon the possibilities of development by the aid of the sub-soil plow and other things, when he was interrupted by a farmer from the region mentioned who asked what he would do on those farms, where, by his description, he showed that Greeley’s methods were ridiculously impracticable; upon which Greeley simply raised his eyes and replied "Raise sheep," and went on with his address. The soil is well adapted to raising hay and grazing.
The county is well supplied with small streams, which find their way down from the rocks and mountains, and, after winding many miles among the irregular barriers with which nature has opposed their direct progress, reach the smoother waters of the Delaware or the Hudson. The largest of these, the Katskill—properly Kats Kil—which rises in a swamp in Schoharie county, called by the Dutch Eckerson Vly, and flows through this county, across the towns of Durham, Cairo and Catskill, forms for short distances the dividing line between Durham and Greenville and between Catskill and Athens, and empties into the Hudson after following its devious channel a distance of about 40 miles. Its principal tributary on the north is Potick Creek which rises in Albany county, and coming down across the northeast corner of Greenville and the west end of Coxsackie, forms the dividing line between Cairo on its west bank and Athens on its east, joins the Katskill about five miles above its mouth. About two miles from it mouth the Katskill is joined by the Katerskil, its principal tributary on the south, which rises in the lakes on South Mountain and flows through a serpentine channel down one of the grandest gorges in all this mountain region. As it descends it makes several falls and cascades of rare beauty and grandeur. The most noteworthy of these are Haines’s Falls, where the waters of the West Branch of the Katerskil dash over a precipice 150 feet high, and the Katerskil Falls where the east or main branch of the stream comes over two falls a few yards apart, the first being 175 feet high and the second 80 feet. Inspired by it beauty William Cullen Bryant many years ago wrote a poem which is so frequently quoted as not to require repetition here. Though the distance from its source to its junction with the Katskill is not over nine miles, this stream probably flows 25 miles to gain it. The Schoharie Kill rises in the southern part of the town of Hunter and flows northwesterly across Jewett, Lexington and Prattsville, draining nearly half the county, and taking a northerly course empties into the Mohawk, and thus its waters, after making a circuit of 175 miles, pass down the Hudson within 10 miles of their starting point. The principal branches of this stream are the Batavia Kill which rises in the eastern part of Windham and flows through that town and Ashland joining it in Prattsville; and the West Kill which rises in the southern part of Lexington, and flowing north, joins the Schoharie from the west. The Bush Kill, which with it branches drains the town of Halcott, flows westward into the Delaware.
The rock formation of this county furnishes an exceedingly interesting field for the study of the geologist. As we begin to investigate the character of this formation we learn that it is entirely the result of oceanic processes. The section contains no igneous or volcanic rocks. The existence of coal below the surface here is also proven to be a scientific impossibility, since the rocks that crop our here are part of strata that lie a great distance below the coal formation. Upon the bottom of the great primitive ocean, composed as that bottom was of the hypogene rocks, granite, gneiss, mica slate and the like, there were formed by the depositing of sediment successive layers of material which became rock. To these successive layers that had their period of formation before that of the rocks of this section, geologists have given names corresponding for the most part with the localities where the different layers respectively appear. These are, in order from the bottom, 1, Potsdam sandstone; 2, claciferous sandrock; 3, Black River and Trenton limestones; 4, Utica slate; 5, Hudson River group; 6, grey sandstone and conglomerate; 7, Medina sandstone; 8, Clinton group; 9, Niagara group; 10, Onondaga salt group; 11, Helderberg limestones, including grits and sandstones; 12, Hamilton group, including Marcellus shale and Tully limestone; 13, portage group, including Genesee slate; 14, Chemung group and old red sandstone or Catskill group. Those in italics are found cropping out in this county.
The Hudson River shales and sandstones occupy a belt one to two miles in width along the river. This group was formed in that long ago time designated by geologists are the Lower Silurian period. It contains but very few if any fossils. Following this formation there appears to have been a long period of suspension in the process of depositing material for rock making here. During this time the process was going on in other parts, but no rocks that have been discovered were formed here until the Upper Silurain period, when the materials of the Helderberg group were deposited. Just above the limestones of this group a very monotonous formation of shales is found, from one to three hundred feet in thickness. This is a formation of the Devonian age, to which geologist have given the name Cauda-galli, because of sea-weed imprint of "cock-tail" form which appears on some of the beds. The fossils in this formation are few, except the apparently vegetable remains which give its name. Another layer of limestone follows this, and is called Corniferous from the circumstance of its containing chert or hornstone scattered in irregular nodules through it. It contains but few fossils. Next above this appears the Marcellus shale of the Hamilton group. This has a thickness of about one hundred feet, is black and sometimes glazed, and containing indications of bitumen it has led to the belief that coal existed below, and thus investigations have been pursued in search of that formation, but always without reward. This rock contains fossils. Its texture is soft, so that its line of outcrop has been worn away, and is now hidden beneath the glacial deposits that have since been made.
Above this black shale the rock becomes of lighter color, and runs through a gradation to a sandy composition, still containing fossils. This stratum appears in the hills which lie three to four miles back from the river in the southern part of the county. The various strata of this group are interspersed with a few thin calcareous bands. Upon this rests a series of shaly sandstones and shales known as the Chemung group. The material of this group is wanting in calcareous matter, and, except perhaps in the very lowest strata, it is destitute of fossils. This group with the next, the Catskill group, forms the great mass of mountains. The two groups taken together are more than three thousand feet in thickness. The latter consists of red shales and sandstones, form the decomposition of which the soil forms a redish clay.
The various strata of the rocks we have noticed, which at first lay horizontally, were, while in a plastic condition, compressed into wrinkles or folds by the action of some unknown and immeasurable force of nature. These folds lie nearly parallel with each other and with the river. Near the river they are sharply bent, so that their sides become parallel, but farther away their acuteness decreases. It is supposed that the pressure which produced them was exerted from the direction of the river, pushing the great mass of material in a direction a little north of west. The rock strata have an average south-southeasterly dip of forty to seventy degrees. The Hudson River group, which received the bulk of this pressure, is covered by varying depths of blue and yellow clays, through which, at frequent intervals, its distorted and ragged folds break out. Besides the one just mentioned there have been other agencies, very powerful ones, at work to change the shape and appearance of the original formations that we have notice. These were the erosion following the great upheaval of the former ocean bed into dry land, and the movements of those great sheets of ice glaciers across the face of the continent, grinding down one place and filling up another with the earthy and rocks they had stolen from some far-off region.
Of all the rock formations we have noticed the Helderberg group occupies the greatest part of this county, and is of the most importance. Its thickness is from two to three hundred feet. The lower strata subdivided into five sections may be briefly described, with the fossils peculiar to each, as follows:
The Waterlime: fine-grained, even, thin bedded, light-colored; weathers whitish; dips to the west; thickness about seventy feet; fossils, Leperditia and Tentaculite.
The lower Penamerus: a hard, blue rock, in knotted layers, often containing blue chert; thickness about eighty feet; dips to the west; fossils, Penamerus, Atrypa, Rhynchonella and others.
The Catskill Shaly Limestone: dull dark blue when freshly broken but weathering brown or gray; even-bedded, thin splitting; thickness about one hundred feet; dips to the west forty to twenty degrees; resists erosion effectively; fossils, Spirifer, Hemipronites, Strophomena, Avicula, Dalmanites and others.
The Encrinal Limestone: hard, coarse crystalline, frequent reddish tinge, with dull green partings between its heavy layers; layers about horizontal; contains numerous crinoid stems and other fossils.
The Upper Pentamerus: a hard, blue, crystalline limestone; thick-bedded; largely composed of shells; strata lying flat; thickness, by itself undetermined, but in connection with the preceding, with which it is closely joined, about 120 feet; fossils, Pentamerus, Spirifer, Orthis and Rhynochonella.
In the foregoing paragraphs on the geology of this county, we have been largely assisted by facts given by William Morris Davis, of Cambridge, Mass., in "Appalachia," and in Van Loan’s Catskill Mountain Guide.