Ulster County, and particularly one resident, had a significant role in the creation of the Forest Preserve within the Catskills. It was not intended by any design of the State of New York that a part of the Forest Preserve would come into being within Ulster County. This was an act precipitated by Cornelius A. J. Hardenbergh, who was an avowed opponent of taxes.
Hardenbergh was a bachelor, farmer, and merchant, and later a member of the New York State Assembly. He owned and operated a 100-acre farm on the northerly bank of the Shawangunk Kill along the southern boundary of the Town of Shawangunk on the county line between Orange County and Ulster County. He picked up his mail in Orange County, but he resided in Ulster County. Cornelius was a descendant of the Hardenbergh of the Hardenbergh Patent. When a tax was to be imposed on his wheel-making shop and business in the early days of the Civil War, he closed his shop rather than pay the tax.
In the early years of New York state, the State was the owner of millions of acres of forested land in the Adirondacks. The new state passed a series of laws designed to dispose of the "waste and unappropriated lands" of the Adirondacks. The buyers were loggers and the railroads, all only interested in turning a quick profit from the cutting and sale of timber, then leaving the land to return to the State for unpaid taxes. Though the State did, indeed, get rid of much of its Adirondack holdings, a good deal returned to public ownership greatly depleted in value due to the removal and destruction of the forest resource. In the Catskills, most of the land had already been given away by patents from the Crown. If the State came to hold any land at all in the Catskills in the early years of the history of the state, it was only a few parcels scattered about the mountains.
During the latter half of the 1800's, great concern was expressed that the area of the Adirondacks and its choicest mountains be preserved before the forests on the mountain tops were also spoiled. In 1872, a state law established a commission to inquire about giving specific title to the State of the previously timbered lands lying within the eight counties of the Adirondacks and converting those lands into a public park. In 1883, another law prohibited the sale of lands belonging to the State that were situated in a then-expanded eleven counties of the Adirondacks. The enactment of these laws stopped the sale of Adirondack lands, making the State an active and major landowner. And still land continued coming to the State because of unpaid taxes and through partition sales. What was to be done to preserve some parcels and to dispose of others?
In 1885, a group of experts in forest preservation was hired by the State Comptroller Alfred Chapin. This group was convinced that something needed to be done to preserve the remaining forests in the Adirondacks. These experts had also visited the forest region of Ulster and Delaware counties -- ironically, they were not much impressed. They said that the protection of these forests is of less general importance than the preservation of the Adirondacks forests. The possibility of the forests of the Catskills ever yielding merchantable timber again in any considerable quantities was at best remote; and those forests guarded no stream of more than local influence.
The report of this group of experts recommended legislation establishing a Forest Preserve "of all the lands now owned or which may hereafter be acquired by the State of New York" and such lands to be kept forever as wild forest lands. These very important words -- "of all the lands now owned or which may hereafter be acquired by the State of New York" -- enabled the creation of the Catskill Park. However, the recommended legislation specifically related to the desire to preserve the forest lands of the Adirondacks. Another law at the same time recommended providing that the lands of the Forest Preserve would be taxable for all purposes. This is where Cornelius Hardenbergh took exception.
That "the state land that is now owned or which may hereafter be acquired" in the Catskills did become a part of the Forest Preserve and that a Catskill Park was created all had to do with a complicated series of laws dealing with taxes (and the non-payment of them) on lands and the very hard-headed tenacity of Hardenbergh. Hardenbergh became involved in a running battle with Comptroller Chapin, and previously with some of his predecessors, over state taxes being assessed against the lands acquired by the County (in this case, Ulster County) at tax sale.
Hardenbergh's position was based on his opposition to State taxes being assessed against the lands acquired by the County at tax sale. He was incensed when a law was passed requiring county treasurers to collect all taxes levied on lands for state or county purposes, laws that required the counties to pay taxes to the State by the first of May each year, regardless of whether the treasurers had been able to collect them or not. Over the next ten years, the Comptroller and Hardenbergh won alternating rounds; and through all the law-making and jousting, Ulster County was sometimes exempted from and sometimes included in the requirement to pay these state taxes. Hardenbergh wanted to keep within Ulster County the ownership of unredeemed and unsold lands, the ability to sell those lands, and the taxing capability on those lands. By 1883, Ulster County was in arrears of some $40,000 that was presumably owed to the State. In 1884, Hardenbergh was finally elected to the Assembly and he was now able to act directly by bringing his own bills before the Assembly.
Influenced by the 1883 law prohibiting the sale of State land in the eleven Adirondack counties, he introduced a bill to prohibit the State from selling its land in Ulster County. In 1885, a sweeping piece of legislation relieved the County from the operation of any laws enacted in 1879, 1880, 1881, and 1883 and it directed the comptroller to cancel all previous sales of lands to Ulster County under any of the repealed laws and to convey those lands to the State. It directed the Comptroller to give credit on his books to Ulster County for the principal and interest due on the lands that would be conveyed to the State. All in one law, Ulster was out from under its debt and its large tax-sale land holdings became owned by the State.
At this time, the State owned approximately 135,000 acres of lands that were essentially just a lot of detached parcels ranging in area from as few as 10 acres to as many as 500 acres. All these parcels were within the Forest Preserve, but they were outside the Adirondack Park limits. The Catskill Park had not yet been created. The general thinking about the suitability of whether a parcel ought or ought not to be part of the Forest Preserve was based on whether it was within the Park limits. The Adirondack Park existed, but, again, the Catskill Park did not yet exist. Therefore, the parcels within the Catskills were considered wholly unsuited for a forest preserve. However, the Constitution prevented the sale of such lands. An amendment to the Constitution was recommended to permit such sales but only for those parcels "outside the Park limits." Here the Catskills was caught again. The Constitution covered the Catskills as an area "where no park has yet been laid out." Therefore, the legislators had to establish a Catskill Park by legislative enactment before it could dispose of parcels of land that lay beyond its limits. The passage of an act creating the Catskill Park defined its boundaries by very specific metes and bounds. This very specifically defined boundary became the so-called Blue Line. The Catskill Park was established not for what was in it or what was to be done in it, but, rather, what was outside it that the State wished to dispose of. The result of this backward way of creation is the gem that we have as the Catskill Park.