A Catskill Catalog by Bill Birns

There’s this great video posted on the video-sharing Web site YouTube. Go to YouTube.com and search for “1955 Game Warden.” You’ll find an eight-minute movie about the late Bryan Burgin of Margaretville.

In 1921, along the East Branch of the Delaware River, rumors began to circulate: the City of New York was coming, and it meant to take the valley for its water supply.

Two days before Christmas in 1890, The New York Times reported on the ice harvest upstate. “All the icehouses in the Catskill Summer boarding region and of the Delaware County dairymen are filled with the clearest and best ice ever gathered.”

In 1888, Mr. Hill, proprietor of the Ackerly House in Margaretville, bought a full-page advertisement in Thompson & Breed’s Ulster & Delaware Railroad Directory. The ad featured a good photograph of his hotel, a substantial four-story frame building, fronted by three tiers of long wrap-around balconies, topped by a dormer-constructed fifth story tucked into the mansard roof.

High school seniors around the Catskills, as elsewhere, are completing essays, gathering letters of recommendation, and sending off their college applications. Support of their efforts is an annual end-of-first-semester effort for teachers and guidance counselors. Students are lucky they only have to go through it once – barring transfer or grad school.