A strip of forest with thick stands of trees including tall oaks and hickory separates the 8,300-acre Ashokan Reservoir and New York State Route 28, the main highway into the Catskill Mountains. Constructed in the early twentieth century, the reservoir provides 40 percent of New York City’s water. The forest surrounding the reservoir is maintained by New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), whose mission includes safeguarding the quality of the reservoir’s water—often called the champagne of American urban water. Most of these lands are open to hunters and fishers with permits or anyone who might take an interest in hiking through what seems at first glance to be pristine forest.
Archaeologist April Beisaw of Vassar College has spent years walking in these woods and concedes that they offer ample opportunities for birding and other ways of experiencing the Catskills’ native wildlife. But she also sees the forests through the eyes of someone who knows that the trees and undergrowth here conceal a traumatic historical event, the aftermath of which was the construction of the reservoir, which supplies an essential resource to the city’s eight million people today.
“This was a cemetery,” says Beisaw, as she enters an opening in the forest where a wetland and pond stretch over several acres. Once the final resting place of dozens of residents of the hamlet of Olive, the cemetery was one of 32 that were relocated to make way for the reservoir. “The water table moved up because of the reservoir,” she says, “and water now fills all those former graves.” In anticipation of the reservoir’s construction, New York City officials appropriated some 12,000 acres, leading to flooding of four hamlets and the relocation of eight more. In total, about 500 homes, 35 stores, 10 churches, and eight mills were destroyed. The city used
