Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), William Cronon (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A pivotal work in environmental history that makes connections between issues of urbanization, resource development, land use, cultural representation, and environmental consciousness in new and provocative ways." Marguerite S. Shaffer, Miami University "One can discern the entire American relationship with nature through the prism of the Catskills: colonialism, subsistence agriculture, industry, ethnic segregation, and, more recently, a species of post-modern placelessness."- Karl Jacoby, Brown University

Product Description

For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains, David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein, with environmental, economic, and cultural consequences.

Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created a great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water.

The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence of writers and artists - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation.

In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.

David Stradling is associate professor of history at the University of Cincinnati. His focus is the intersection of urban and environmental history. He is author of Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951 and editor of Conservation in the Progressive Era: Classic Texts.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 311 pages
• Publisher: University of Washington Press (January 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295987472
• ISBN-13: 978-0295987477
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #806,561 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Catskills Definitive, February 14, 2009

By	William Birns (Catskill Mountains of N.Y.) - See all my reviews

David Stradling's Making Mountains is the definitive and indispensable Catskill Mountain history, the best thing written on the Catskills in 35 years. The book is thesis driven - showing how local rural residents and city visitors collaborate to create the kind of mountain environment that serves the interests of both, and that achieves the tangible realization of our culture's conception of"mountains" envisioned by artists and writers.
The narrative is engrossing. Stradling combines a love of the Catskills and its people with academic rigor. This book is the real thing. If you are interested in the mountains, you need this book.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Making Mountains: NYC & the Catskills, January 19, 2008

By	sallyforth "computergrannie" (AZ) - See all my reviews

I am enjoying this book very much. I was born in the Catskills and I am learning so much that my parents never told me. It is very well written.Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)