Platte Clove and Elka Park

Transcribed by Jerome Kazlauskas

Brett Barry  0:03  
Welcome to Kaatscast, a biweekly podcast delivering interviews, arts, culture, and history from New York's Catskill Mountains. In this episode, we visit Platte Clove, a steep valley between Tannersville and West Saugerties. A portion of Platte Clove Road is open seasonally: mid April through October. John Farrell and Paul Dibbell have deep roots in this clove.

John Farrell  0:31  
I'm John Farrell. I lived here my whole life. I'm the superintendent of the highways right now in the town of Hunter; take care of the roads all over the mountaintop from Platte Clove to Lanesville to Silver Hollow; the ways the towns were laid out years ago. We plow all winter long after it snows, and then during the summer, we maintain the roads blacktop, keep the roads up to snuff. A lot of stuff back in the old days was laid up rock or logs and they rot and they fall down every 20-30 years and you do it over again. So we're trying to make stuff more permanent now and hopefully the next generation doesn't have to keep rebuilding and rebuilding and rebuilding.

Paul Dibbell  1:13  
I'm Paul Dibbell and I'm the superintendent of the Elka Park Association and we are in the Elka Park Clubhouse. I'm responsible for the buildings and grounds and such like that. In the late 1880s, the group of German industrialists from Manhattan and the greater metropolitan New York area got together and purchased this land that we're on. There's about 1,100 acres and built a group of summer homes. They were originally set up to be summer homes and over the years and especially in the past 20 years or so, their usages begun to be year-round. People are taking them, winterizing them, and taking advantage of all the activities and things that happen up in the ... in the mountains here in the wintertime. Also, the common bond amongst the founders was a choral society in Manhattan called the Liederkranz Club.

Audio  2:16  
[MUSIC]

Paul Dibbell  2:19  
It still exists today and they ... they took the "EL" and the "K" in German is "KA" and took that and put them together for Elka Park; having nothing to do with Elks as many people think.

Audio  2:33  
[MUSIC]

John Farrell  2:49  
I live down and right in Platte Clove itself about five miles from here. Our family got here about 1790. They came in through New Orleans and went up the Mississippi and came back down to Manhattan where they want a land lottery from there and came up to here to the mountains and they got here about 1810 over in deeper Platte Clove and they lived here ever since. It's a hard place to live. They always say, "It's one inch from heaven and one inch from hell of this place and it's about the same all the way around," and they worked in the logging camps that were here and the quarries on each one of the mountains. At one time, the mountain drawn like a town almost. There's so many things going on. You can see right across this whole valley. Almost 150 years ago, there was no trees with all your fuel and firewood. Platte Clove Mountain Road originally was down below where the one is now. In the 1880s and '90s, it was a giant business: a bluestone quarry business, and on that mountain, you had him coming up from Saugerties and going this way and they had these quarries up and down these mountains. You can see this road is where they went up. They slowly connected the roads of the quarries and moved it up to a higher elevation where it is today and a lot of ... you can see it going down: it's all slag piles from the quarries. Nowadays, it wouldn't ever happen because they went up on these mountains and destroyed everything. You went in there. It was big crews all done by hand and they chisel these rocks out and they took big formations off the mountain and brought them right out and skidded the rocks out and it was a ... it was a big business, mainly towards the front of the mountains: Black Hole Mountain in that area. Codfish Point was a giant quarry. Around the front, there was giant quarries. Each one had their own names yet: Dibble Quarry on one side, which was a relation to his somewhere. There were engineers at the time. Mud Quarry, California Quarry ... we go to Saugerties ... all the streets down there are bluestone, and down in the city, there's tons of it. We had two train stations in town at one time, and when the weather broke, you started bringing the rock, and then they bought everything you made all winter out to these train stations and they hauled it out of here on train. So that was the biggest way to get rid of it, and then from there, they went into the boarding house business: a lot of them dead. Because the boarding house's all needed food: he needed cows, he needed sheep, and everything that's what they all did with him. You go to these old foundations way up in the woods when we were kids and he's to use metal detectors and you always find sheep bells and goat bells and what they were. I thought all everybody had sheep because you could put your one on us Friday night and have it done by the weekend. He ate the whole thing. It makes sense ... an ox shoe ... you find all the ox shoes and ...

Paul Dibbell  5:36  
Down at the Devil's Dam, my grandfather used to tell about they ... they used oxen for dragging the logs down to the sawmill down on the dam and that was real common with them, too. [ECHO] Yeah, yeah, the ... the water powered mill that was ... that was down on that dam there and the oxen apparently were smart enough that they get actually hook a couple of logs up to it and just send them down and they would go down by themselves and could be unhitched and go back up.

John Farrell  6:07  
You see, one of the original advertisement from why they came up to this area: unlimited waterpower. You go up and down the Schoharie to find all these foundations of a grist mill, saw mills ... everything was waterpower turned and you can ever use to find gritstone where they ground the wheat, buckwheat, and things. This was a big thing here and that died out fairly fast, but once you got into steam engines, you didn't have to use that normally, but the foundations ... most of them are there up like in the '70s and '80s. Some of the big floods took a lot of a mountain, but you still find them here and there along the streams. There's all kinds of weird stuff on the streams, but it was hard up here because it was so hard to make a living. There's no fields ... there were nothing. It was all hardcore wilderness to start with ... went through the boarding houses then you went through the depression where there was nothing. Then you had to ski slope and build up and which was a real big business and that died back down again. Then you had to bar business which was big and that all died down. Back in the '70s, you went from Haines Falls to Hunter who was 80 license bars. There were more bars per capita than there were capitas.

Brett Barry  7:11  
This episode is sponsored by Mama's Boy Burgers. Every Mama's Boy burger is made from local humanely raised grass fed beef right here on the mountaintop. Stop in for a burger, fries, and a milkshake or for a cone of creamy frozen custard. Mama's Boy Burgers is located at the only traffic light in Tannersville. Open daily at 11:30. Great food in the great outdoors. Mama's Boy.

John Farrell  7:39  
Got two seasonal roads in the town of Hunter: Platte Clove Mountain and the Roaring Kill and a ... it's closed up for the winter months ... "A seasonal use road: no maintenance on," the local people all know. "Well, it's snowing! I'm not going over there." GPS: they went right down it. Now we got to close them off physically, otherwise people get hurt and they're just dangerous. Platte Clove Mountains ... no guardrails, and someone said, "Ploughed it!" It's like ... "No!" You get ice on that road, it would be a nightmare!

Brett Barry  8:06  
In fair-weather months, the seasonal road offers stunning views and a hair-raising drive. So ... use caution! The parking areas leading up to it; provide access to a number of hiking trails.

John Farrell  8:19  
You can't beat the place. When you come here, I know people hike it every year and I find stuff different every time, even the state trails are well laid out. We put the Roaring Kill Parking Lot in ... that with the first trails [New York State] put back into like 45 years. They hooked that one up. It goes to the Dibble Quarry. It's a beautiful quarry. It's all laid out nice. And now, we actually have some places to park, so it'd be ... it's well worth a day trip or a two day trip. There's quite a few spots to go around nice and easy and you can stop and have a picnic on the parking areas they made over ... you've mentioned Huckleberry Point. That's a gorgeous spot ... and when you go in Prediger Road, that parking lot alone is nice and that's a long hike up in narrative that brings you around to Echo Lake, which is a gorgeous spot up in there, too.

Paul Dibbell  9:07  
If you're going to make the loop, it probably shouldn't go without saying that ... going down the Platte Clove Mountain Road is not for the faint of heart.

Male Voice  9:33  
Don't park on the road!

Male Voices  9:36  
[LAUGHTER]

Male Voice  9:39  
Right now, you have to park in the parking lot!

John Farrell  9:42  
Get there early and that way you get a good day in and on the whole thing.

Paul Dibbell  9:25  
And as far as my favorite thing to do when I'm not working, which I seem to be working a lot. But anyhow, I just like to go and get on the motorcycle and go for a ride. Out toward Windham and Prattsville, there's a County Road Route 10 that goes up out of Prattsville and East and then down into the Durham Valley. It's just a spectacular ride anytime here, and if you happen to be up here during leaf season, you know, in the fall, it's ... it's just gorgeous and ... and that's ... that's my recreation. That's my relaxation. Let's just get out and go for a motorcycle ride.

Audio  9:56  
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John Farrell  9:57  
I have a woodlot and I like to go up there and just tinker on it and, you know, cutting ... do things and we'll work up and down through the woods ... just relaxes, yeah.

Audio  10:07  
[REVVING ENGINE SOUND]

Brett Barry  10:10  
Audio production by Silver Hollow Audio with the support of the Mountain Cloves Scenic Byway. For maps, more information, or a CD copy of this tour, please go to mtnclovesbyway.com. That's mtnclovesbyway.com. Thanks also to our sponsor, the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce. Providing services to businesses, community organizations, and local governments in the Central Catskills region. Follow the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce on Facebook and sign up for a weekly email of local events at centralcatskills.com. Kaatscast is a production of Silver Hollow Audio. Please don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you again in two weeks. I'm Brett Barry. Thanks for listening!