Delaware River
This photograph was taken sometime between 1929 and 1936, when New York City’s Tunnel No. 2 was being constructed. It runs twenty miles from Hillview Reservoir in the Bronx, under the East River, then through Queens and Brooklyn. Perhaps even more amazing, its major sources of water originate more than 100 miles to the northeast, in the Delaware River watershed. Three major reservoirs—Cannonsville, Pepaccton, and Neversink—provide anywhere between 50 to 80 percent of of New York City’s water on a given day.
The Delaware Aqueduct was the longest and most complex in a series of engineering projects dating back to an aqueduct built in 1842—the Croton from Westchester County. Before then, epidemics of yellow fever and cholera killed thousands of people due to unsanitary wells; large fires burned out of control because there wasn’t enough water. The city was so grateful for drinkable water that it constructed the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, along with its “Angel of the Waters” statue. More recently, however, major leaks in the Delaware Aqueduct—somewhere between 10 and 36 million gallons per day—remind us that water isn’t something to be taken for granted. New York City’s protected watershed is extremely unusual, often invisible, and potentially fragile.
From the Gazetteer: “The Delaware Basin occupies Delaware and Sullivan and portions of several of the adjacent cos. The N. or principal branch of the river rises in the N.E. part of Delaware co. and flows S.W. to near the Penn. line; thence it turns S. E. and forms the boundary of the State to the line of N. J. Its principal branches are the Pepacton and Neversink Rivers. These streams all flow in deep, narrow ravines bordered by steep, rocky hills.... The Delaware & Hudson Canal extends from the Delaware River N. along the valley of the Neversink, through Deerpark. In the central part of the co. a wide ditch has been dug, for the purpose of draining the Drowned Lands, which has been of immense value to the county....[The township of Delhi] had a population in 1810 of 2396 souls, with 409 families, 327 taxable inhabitants, 216 electors; and there were 195,038 dollars of taxable property. The general surface is either mountainous or hilly, with deep vallies, and there are fine flats along the river, though not very extensive....The inhabitants are principaily farmers, more attentive to the cultivation of the soil than the getting of lumber, a trade that enriches nobody but the merchant, and actually impoverishes alike the land with its occupant, whether he rent or own it” (French 21, 502; Spafford 176). Major tributaries: Neversink River, Mongaup River. Major Lakes: Pepacton Reservoir, Cannonsville Reservoir, Neversink Reservoir. Highest Point: Slide Mountain (4,177 ft). 2,390 square miles in New York State.
John Burroughs, “A Spring Relish” (1896)
Born and raised in Delaware County, Burroughs began his professional life as a teacher but had the good fortune to receive encouragement from Walt Whitman—who became a lifelong friend. Burroughs became a prolific and respected nature writer who also was very well connected, and thus influential within the conservation movement of the early 20th century. His nature writing was accessible while asking its readers to consider deeper ecological, even philosophical questions. In this excerpt from his collection A Year in the Fields, he describes the variable character of rivers in his native watershed.
“The noise of a brook, you may observe, is by no means in proportion to its volume. The full March streams make far less noise relatively to their size than the shallower streams of summer, because the rocks and pebbles that cause the sound in summer are deeply buried beneath the current. ‘Still waters run deep’ is not so true as ‘deep waters run still.’ I rode for half a day along the upper Delaware, and my thoughts almost unconsciously faced toward the full, clear river. Both the Delaware and the Susquehanna have a starved, impoverished look in summer, unsightly stretches of naked drift and bare, bleaching rocks. But behold them in March, after the frost has turned over to them the moisture it has held back and stored up as the primitive forests used to hold the summer rains. Then they have an easy, ample, triumphant look, that is a feast to the eye. A plump, well-fed stream is as satisfying to behold as a well-fed animal or a thrifty tree.”
Thomas Worthington Whittredge, Autumn on the Delaware (1875). We pause during a still moment, seemingly at dawn or dusk, as seven deer come to the Delaware River for water. The river’s placid surface and enclosure on all sides organizes the space; through a gap in the trees we behold mountains in the distance. Whittredge usually is grouped with other Hudson River School painters like Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt, the latter a good friend. Here we see some characteristic techniques of these painters in this view: a vision of nature untouched by humans; fallen trees and snags contrasting the more scenic elements. Knowing that Autumn was painted after the Civil War, during the rise of industrialization in America, how would you characterize the appeal Whittredge’s art?
Works Consulted
—Burroughs, John. A Year in the Fields: Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs. Houghton, Miflin, 1896.
—French, J. H. Gazetteer of the State of New York. Ira J. Friedman, 1860.
—New York. Department of Environmental Conservation. Delaware River Watershed.
—Spafford, Horatio Gates. A Gazetteer of the State of New York. H.C. Southwick, 1813.