| It is surely the most enduringly beautiful country in the world, this serene county of pasture, woods and water. On the Catskills Western slopes, Delaware County is a land of mountains and valleys, of sudden spectacular vistas and gentle sheltered aspects.
The abundance of water is one of its great charms—a bend in the road and there before you is a still pool. Another bend and the road carries you over one of hundreds of streams, a wild stony torrent, a stately, well-bred river, or maybe only a merry little creek.
Another Delaware splendor is its trees—hundreds of varieties of beautiful old trees lining highway and main street, lovely in spring and summer and a great glory in the fall.
The hunting and fishing are superb.
Delaware County covers 1460 square miles, an area larger than that of Rhode Island. It ranges from valley bottoms of 1,000 feet above sea level to peaks higher than 3 000 feet. Both branches of the Delaware River rise in the Northeast corner (the West Branch in Lake Utsayantha, Stamford: the East Branch in Grand Gorge) and traverse the County before joining forces at Hancock.
Delaware County is gaining a new reputation as a vacation home haven. In increasing numbers, residents of the metropolitan areas are purchasing a few acres, or even small farms, for summer homes or hunting or fishing camps. These part time residents are in permanent captivity do they but know it. This alluring land casts a spell from which there is no escape.
In the spring, with every brook in torrent, with a few lovely, warm, promising days, with the trees in feathery bud, the bulbs just pushing up through patchy snow, the herds of cows back in newly green pastures after a winter in the barn, plows breaking ground, fish leaping in streams. In the summer, the lush, green summer, with the indescribable smell of new mown hay, the magnificent, majestic trees the corn ripening and growing tall in the fields, countless welcoming waters, fish deep in the streams. In the fall, so beautiful in its coloring it is almost unbelievable, with the streams again in spate, the days brilliant in clarity and sunshine, the fields a-rubble, the farmers bustling to prepare for the winter ahead, and the deer bounding across almost every highway. In the winter, bleak, cold, snow laden, with hungry deer In the meadows of a morning now, the evergreens splashing color against Andrew Wyeth grays and tans, the awesome silences of a bright day, the cows content and shedding warmth in tight barns.
When you come to see us, prepare to stay. —R. G. |
