Excerpt from "The Catskills"

Here is some interesting WV history sent to me by WCA member Carl Tannenbaum. Here is what Carl had to say:

Here is an excerpt from a book entitled The Catskills by T. Morris Longstreth.  It was written in 1915.  I was acquainted with him at Haverford College (our mutual alma mater) a few years before his death in 1975 at the age of 89.  He wrote many books and magazine articles on a wide variety of subjects, but this is a delightful essay on his roaming through the Catskills.  You can see the whole book at    http://catskillarchive.com/tc/

here is his take on Woodland Valley:

Woodland Valley was once and better named Snyder's Hollow. Some lily-livered namester with more sentimentality than sense did ill to deprive the late Snyder of his due. If he first settled in it, he was a discerning man and deserves the credit. If an impersonal name had to be found for the smiling curves and beckoning aisles of the valley, the first ass that brayed might have better taken Hee Haw Hollow to christen it with than the school-girlish and indistinguishable title of Woodland, where every other valley is woodland too.

This valley is a wander-way of sheer delight. You can loaf along it in the sunshine and watch the trout, or you can visit the little colony and talk with its founder, or explore into its stream enlivened recesses. At its head the Wittenberg is its dark guardian, and Cross and Pleasant stand. From the last a ridge runs out a protecting arm along the entire valley, while on its western side great Panther sends out buttress after buttress to shelter it f rom storms. Into it flows the Panther Kill, another cherubic, laughing brook, wilful as an Indian child. The vistas up these valley arms are altogether lovely. I have yet to find a fellow tramp who has not left part of his heart up Woodland Valley.