While re-reading the numerous books written on the Catskill Mountains, I thought I’d share a bit from the 1995 Alf Evers "IN CATSKILL COUNTRY." This touches

on springtime, refreshing after a long winter! Plus, Alf Evers is a wealth of information on the Catskills, as well as an incredible writer.       

"When Henry Thoreau came to the Catskills in 1844, he characterized the mountaintop between the Kaaterskill Falls and the famed Mountain House not as the setting of a great summer hotel, but as "the raspberry and huckleberry region."  Thoreau often dined on wild huckleberries and notes their presence in the accounts of his mountain climbs.  In Walden, Thoreau expressed a strong belief that in order to truly enjoy a huckleberry, you must eat it on the spot immediately after picking.”

Evers said by the 1840s, huckleberries were becoming a significant source of income in the Catskills. Picking the berries and shipping them to New York was beginning to employ thousands of busy hands. He said in 1875 the Kingston Freeman told of the enthusiasm that stirred the people of the huckleberry country to a kind of midsummer madness each year!

 Evers said early berries brought the highest price; hence the beginning of the picking season gave a modest goldrush flavor to the Catskills. The steamers "put on extra speed in order to rush the berries to market" for the greatest huckleberry consumers, the City of New York. 

We even had the Huckleberry Railroad whose conductor let travelers on and off the train to eat or pick huckleberries. (The Catskill & Tannersville Railroad ran from the top of South Main Street in Tannersville,  to Otis Summit, at the Catskill Mountain House.)

I hope you enjoyed this bit of huckleberry history!

Stay well and be careful.

Dede Terns-Thorpe/Hunterhistorian@gmail.com