Making Mountains -- New York City and the Catskills by David Stradling, Foreward by William Cronon, UWash. Press '08, $35, 321 pages, ISBN #0295987472. Index, bibliographical essay, source notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.
University of Cincinnati historian David Stradling thinks that the fact that the Catskill Mountains have been compared to the Swiss Alps is, at once, laughable and understandable. Laughable because the towering Alps are nearly four times as high as the Catskills. Understandable because the Catskills are within 100 miles of one of the most iconic cities of the world and its weekend and vacation home.
It's rare that History Wire encounters a university press book that is simultaneously enlightening and accessibly (even entertainingly) written. Making Mountains will appeal to Gothamites who venture north on weekends or vacations and to those ruralians who want to better understand how New York City has influenced their region's development.
Stradling is adept at explaining the corrosive effect of 19th century urbanization and immigration on New York City, leading to an impulse by residents to flee the city, either on weekends or permanently, an impulse accommodated midcentury by the advent of railroads. Settled as farmland, the Catskill region soon found itself transitioning into the home of resorts and its landscapes the subject of paintings by what came to be known as the Hudson River School, prime among their artists being Thomas Cole and Frederic Church.
In time, as the Big Apple evolved, so did the Catskills. Vacation homes began to replace hotels of the Borscht Belt. Yet through it all, the more urban New York City became, the greater its insistence that wilderness be preserved for their leisure use. Some historians of urban rural evolution talk of cities swallowing up the economy and culture of the hinterlands. Refreshingly, Stradling realizes the interplay isn't that simple or domineering and employs a much more complex and balanced analysis.
