3rd Ledge - escarpment

[mike]

Try the 1949 Arrowhead map: http://www.catskillmountaineer.com/maps-11.html

[dundee]

Thanks, but they're not the same map. I used to have one that looks just like the one posted by ssjamk65 . It was a Xerox copy and showed much more detail and all the hidden places that the NYNJ TC map doesn't show. The map I had showed places like "Motorboat rock and "Pelham Ledge". There was no name on the map to ID who made it and I have no idea where I picked up this copy.

The search for the Holy Grail goes on...

[mtnclimber]

Walking News, Inc is the map maker you are referring to. Been out of print for 30-40 years now. Ask Mike, I think he has a copy.

[dundee]

Thanks. I found my copy about 20 years ago, but for the life of me, I can't remember where I got from. It's a great map with all the little secret places on it. My copy is in pieces and looking to replace.

[ssjamk65]

Here is a link to a full scan of the map. Hope this helps.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/19013482@N02/14433627093/

Scott
( one of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to post pictures correctly on this forum.)

[kennykb]

Scott,

That map is fascinating in what's right and what's wrong about it. I presume that you hand-drew your tracks, because GPS would surely not align to that map!

I took a whack at georeferencing the 1975 map, and ... it's a mixed bag.

I think the guy started out by tracing over a USGS quad, because the contour lines are all right in line with a modern digital elevation model. The public roads also line up perfectly, as do the streams and the contours of North-South Lake and the pond by the Kaaterskill Hotel site.

Harding Road is right where it should be, except that the switchback at the top is nearer The Gulf.

The Escarpment Trail on the east side is set a little in from the cliff edge, and Bear's Den is way too far to the south. (Mike insists that Bear's Den is the name of Sunrise Rock, but I learnt it as the name of the overhanging ledge between Jacob's Ladder and the yellow trail turnoff.)

The roads in the campground have about the right pattern (except for campsites that weren't laid out then, but they're weirdly distorted.

The biggest issue seems to come to the southwest of the campground. All three of the trail loops (Schutt Road, the yellow bridle path, and the Escarpment Trail) seem to be displaced about a quarter-mile up the hill. I confirmed this not only against a modern trail map, but also by overlaying the referenced map onto Google Maps. The Sunset Rock, Inspiration Point, and Bellevue overlooks are all visible in the satellite view - they're bare rock, while everything around them is trees. The modern trail map correctly shows the trail linking them.

Coming around to the southeast, things look much better. The Palenville overlook (the 1975 map says High Rock) and the Indian Head are just where they are in the field. I'm a little puzzled by the 'Forge Quarry'. I haven't been down that way (never spotted an old road there!) but old quarries are usually visible on the satellite view. There is a little bit of rock showing about 200 yards to the south, so this may be another place where the guy's drawing is off. In fact, if we adjust his drawing to put the quarry there, then the L-shaped bend in the trail that goes by it walks the state's property line.

Farther up, Boulder ("Bowlder") Rock is close to where it should be, but the red bypass trail is shown going around the wrong side of the hill (could be a trail relocation? It's shown following a sensible-looking route).

Given some of the weird misalignments, I don't think I'd necessarily trust this map to show where things are in the Pine Orchard. But it promises to be an interesting source for what's in there, and what the names of the features might be. (I suspect some of the fanciful names are the product of the mapmaker's imagination.) It's surely an interesting find, and gives me a bit of an itch to go grab my GPS and see for myself.

[ssjamk65]

I did indeed hand draw my own tracks on that map. I looked back at the 4 trail reports I did that week and I used a different map for each one. I'm hoping someday to find a nice clean copy of the 1870's -1880's Samuel Rusk map from his hard to find book. Maybe someone with access to it could post it here sometime. I know I'm not the only one who would like to see it.

Scott

[kennykb]

I'm pretty sure that I can get the 1879 Rusk map at usable resolution by getting the raw scans from Internet Archive and reprocessing. It's getting a little late tonight to start on that job, but I'll try to keep you posted. The Rusk map also seems to be schematic, rather than quite to scale, but I'm guessing that it's closer than the Walking News map.

[kennykb]

Mike,

Is [url=http://kbk_is-a-geek_net.website/maps/rusk1879/original/]http://kbk_is-a-geek_net.website/maps/rusk1879/original/[/url] a better scan of the Rusk map than the one you have? If so, would you mind downloading and hosting it (Download link at the bottom of the page), so that I don't have to keep it alive? (I have bandwidth problems on my uplink; that file is on my home server.) Going to the original scan bypassed the resolution problems that you noted in the PDF.

In the scan, which comes from www.archive.org, there's an obvious problem in that the page is torn in three places, and the map didn't lie flat in the scanner. Because of this, we're going to have to be very careful about georeferencing it. I think it can probably be done in pieces, starting with the grid intersections (which are minutes of arc) and then working in other things that won't have moved. Note that the longitudes are measured from the Naval Observatory in Washington, not from Greenwich! Depending on what we want to get out of this, georeferencing might not be worthwhile, of course.

The map agrees fairly well with a modern trail map in the location of Sunset Rocks - both of them - the Palenville Overlook, and "Bowlder." (The Walking News map also uses this curious spelling - ought it actually be spelt that way?) A bunch of the old trails are different, but I imagine that Harding would have relocated the ones on his property, particularly when he built the road (now the New York Long Path) up to the Hotel Kaaterskill.

[kennykb]

OOPS! Copy/paste problem. The map is at http://kbk.is-a-geek.net/maps/rusk1879/original/