Kaaterskill High Peak - History

History

The first recorded ascent of Kaaterskill High Peak took place on July 26, 1793 when Peter DeLaBigarre, a French "agent" and frequent visitor to the nearby Clermont estate of Chancellor Robert Livingston, who published him regularly in Transactions, the journal of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures. One of DeLaBigarre's accounts in 1794 described his adventures in the Catskills the year before. Most of his narrative was given over to a springtime trip to Overlook Mountain and North-South Lake, but on the later day he records that he brought a "natural philosopher" friend along with a barometer and climbed "Round Top", which he believed to be the highest Catskill peak, renaming it Liberty Cap in honor of the political change in his homeland. The companion determined the mountain's summit to be 3,549 feet (1,082 m) above sea level, only about 106 feet (32 m) short of its accepted elevation today. This is the earliest recorded climb of any Catskill High Peak.

His visit and account laid the groundwork for the early years of the next century, when a young Thomas Cole would visit the Catskill Mountain House and devote much of his groundbreaking Hudson River School paintings to depictions of the Catskill wilderness. High Peak, visible from the Mountain House as well as from the studio and home he built in Catskill, would frequently show up in the background. The popularity of his art in turn brought more guests to the Mountain House (and later, the Kaaterskill and Laurel hotels) to see it for themselves.

One of those visitors, Princeton geography professor Arnold Henry Guyot, spent much of his summers in the early 1870s striking out to other mountains in the region. He easily became convinced that High Peak was not, as the hoteliers claimed, the high peak of the Catskills. His candidates turned first to other popular local suspects such as Black Dome (known as "Black Top" at the time), then Hunter Mountain and finally to Slide Mountain, in an inland area to the southwest known at the time as the Shandaken Mountains and dismissed by the hotelkeepers as a different range entirely.

He brought his surveying equipment and assistants along, and wound up producing the first accurate map of the Catskill Mountains. Slide's 4,180 feet (1,277 m) put it well above High Peak, now consigned to 23rd on his list (he would also pioneer the switch in names between High Peak and Round Top, once he had established which was higher) The resort owners protested and tried to discredit his findings, but they were solid and by 1879 other surveyors had confirmed them. When New York established its Forest Preserve several years later, a delegation from the state forestry board commemorated the event by climbing Slide, not High Peak. A privately-owned observation tower and neighboring two-story building were built on the summit in the late 19th century, but seem to have been removed sometime around state acquisition of the property two decades later.

Attention paid to the mountain dwindled, and even today it has no officially-maintained trail over its summit, though the "unofficial" Twilight Trail remains well-used and is blazed along most its length. In 1921 both High Peak and Round Top were added to the Forest Preserve.

The south slope of the mountain has seen some development and habitation over the years. A former New York City Police Department camp near the top of Platte Clove was proposed as a site for a prison when it was abandoned in the 1970s, but the plan was dropped after local opposition. Today it is one of the Bruderhof Communities. There are still some private landholdings in the area.

A half-mile (1 km) horse-drawn railroad was once constructed on the south slopes below the col, following the brook by Byrne Road, to haul logs out of the area. Remnants of its steel-topped wooden rails can still be found.

On the north slope, at the precarious head of Kaaterskill Clove, is the community of Twilight Park.

Two small airplanes have crashed on the mountain in the later years of the 20th century. One of them, on May 26, 1983, killed a Watertown man, Rex Miller, when he flew his Piper-28-140 into the mountain at about 3,400 feet (1,000 m) in bad weather while attempting to return home from Poughkeepsie. The remains of his airplane (as well as his shoe) can still be found.

The small Cortina Valley ski area, started in 1975 tried to make a go of it under several different ownerships on the northwestern slope of Round Top, but went out of business for good around 2000. The three trails still remain.

At some point, the state built a snowmobile loop around both peaks, starting at the top of Platte Clove and leveling out at 3,200 feet (975 m). However, it sees little snowmobiler use even in the most severe winters. Recent proposed changes to the Catskill State Land Master Plan could result in the end of this designation.

More of the mountain has been added to the Forest Preserve over the years. It is managed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation as part of the Kaaterskill Wild Forest management unit in Catskill Park.