The Stoney Clove Turnpike was a private company that incorporated in 1873 to upgrade and improve the existing wagon road. The railbed remains visible in the woods to the east almost all the way to the height of land. It was later upgraded to standard gauge and used until 1940, with a flagstop Stony Clove Notch Railroad Station located nearby. Later excavations allowed the Stony Clove and Catskill Mountain Railroad to build a narrow gauge rail line through the gap. Ī few years later, at great expense, the route through the notch was widened to allow enough room for a single wagon by Charles Edwards, a local tanner. Ĭatskill historian Alf Evers suggests that those interested in getting an idea of what Stony Clove Notch was like before the construction of the roads visit nearby Diamond Notch, where it is still possible to put one foot on Southwest Hunter Mountain and another on West Kill Mountain. It is a type of valley of the shadow of death in single file did we have to pass through it and in single file must we pass to the grave. It is the loneliest and most awful corner of the world that I have ever seen - none other, I fancy, could make a man feel more utterly desolate. As painter and writer Charles Lanman said in the 1840s: When the first Europeans were taken through the notch, it was narrow enough that not only was travel through it possible only on foot, those travelers had to go through in single file. Stony Clove Notch was created during the end of the last Ice Age, when meltwater that had accumulated in what is now the Schoharie headlands to the north of the notch gradually began eroding its way through the gap between the mountains, eventually becoming the Stony Clove Creek. One of the Catskills' major hiking trails crosses the road near the notch, and ice climbers and snowboarders have lately been attracted to the cliffs and slopes in winter. Today it is a popular destination not only for tourists in the region but for outdoor recreationists as well. It sits at one end of the range of mountains known as the Devil's Path, and early visitors found it a terrifying place to visit. There is just enough room for the road, and the steep, soaring slopes of both mountains are some of the Catskills' most striking scenery, with landslides and rocky cliffs visible. The notch divides Hunter and Plateau mountains. It is traversed by New York State Route 214, although in the past the Ulster and Delaware Railroad went through it as well. Stony Clove Notch is a narrow pass, roughly 2,220 feet (677 m) in elevation located in the Town of Hunter in Greene County, New York, deep in the Catskill Mountains.
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