History
The Iroquois tribes who first settled the Hudson Valley rarely went high into the mountains except to hunt. The earliest human settlements, by the descendants of Dutch and English colonists, near the mountain date to 1805. Small farms were established on the mountain's lower slopes; as late as 1900 the U.S. Geological Survey quadrangle maps of the area show a road going up the ridge between Lost Clove and McKenley Hollow to a structure called Platt's Cabin just below 2,500 feet (760 m). It was exceptionally high; most other farmland on that side went no higher than 1,800 feet (550 m). A 1910 photograph shows a small farm in the head of Rider Hollow on the west.
Balsam's slopes were originally more abundant in hemlock than they are now. Most were harvested by tanners for the tannin in their bark. Roads built to reach hemlock stands survive in McKenley Hollow as high as 2,360 feet (720 m). The Mine Hollow stand is located at the end of another one on the west side.
In 1885, political machinations by the Ulster County delegation to the state legislature led to the Catskill counties being included in the newly created Forest Preserve along with the Adirondacks. Tax-delinquent lands, many of them abandoned by loggers and tanners who had taken all the harvestable timber, which had become the county's by default were transferred to the state as a way of settling the county's outstanding property tax obligations to the state. They were to remain "forever wild", with no timber being harvested again from them. In 1894, a more strongly worded version of the law was incorporated into the state constitution as Article 14.
Under these provisions, the state bought most of the land it currently owns on Balsam, about three-quarters of the mountain, in 1918. By 1931 the trail that had been built up Belleayre for tourists to reach its lookout tower had been extended over Balsam and was marked as a state-maintained trail on maps. The other two trails had been built by that time as well, the Oliverea-Mapledale trail possibly following an old cattle-herding route over the ridge. A few years later, the pairs of lean-tos in McKenley and Rider hollows were built.
The large tract of state land on the range west of Esopus Creek and extending south toward the Beaver Kill Range was designated a wilderness area in the 1980s following a recommendation made in the first Catskill Park State Land Master Plan. This committed the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to manage the land with the goal of minimizing human impact as much as possible. Accordingly the lower of the two McKenley Hollow lean-tos was removed as it had become a site for parties due to its proximity to the trailhead and parking lot on that side. The lower Rider Hollow lean-to burned in 1995 and was likewise not replaced.
Read more about this topic: Balsam Mountain (Ulster County, New York)
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