| The following column appeared in The River Reporter on October 1, 1998. |
Third and last part of a series on the history of local economics
By Bert S. Feldman
The Recusant Reporter
Thursday, October 1, 1998
As we have explained in two preceding columns, Sullivan County has had only one major industry at any one period of time. And, in all three boom periods, those industries were dependent on the natural resources of our county. Rafting logs down the Delaware River to Philadelphia was, of course, dependent on the vast forests that covered all of our terrain. So was the tanning of raw hides into leather. Tannic acid, the chemical required to process the leather, was derived from the bark of the hemlock trees which covered over ninety percent of Sullivan County. The resort industry’s selling point was largely due to the beautiful countryside which surrounded the hotels and adjacent golf courses.
Several relatively small industries were likewise based on the utilizing natural resources, such as the making of wood acids at Acidalia and elsewhere, and the making of baseball bats and bowling pins.
During the heyday of the resort industry, members of the organization of hotel owners controlled the county. In an effort to maintain a pool of cheap labor, other would-be industries were forced out on various pretests. Among those companies which sought to establish themselves in Sullivan County was Noma, the largest maker of Christmas tree lights, the VanRaalte Company which made women’s gloves and a company that wished to manufacture women’s sportswear.
Sullivan County Community College was designed in a setting around a small lake in Monticello. This layout was very picturesque and access to the amenities of the village was figured in. With their control of the Board of Supervisors, the hotelmen’s association had the location of the college switched to some open land of decayed chicken farms in Loch Sheldrake, in the midst of the center of the resorts. The buildings designed to encircle the lake in Monticello were lined up in a row like the Foreign Legion post in Beau Geste. One of America’s most famous architects, Edward Durrel Stone, who designed the buildings and their placement, has requested that his name doesn’t appear anywhere in the college complex.
The raftsmen are long gone, the tanneries ran out of hemlock bark after the Civil War and the resorts and bungalow colonies have dwindled from an estimated 400, to less than ten. Where do we go from here?
Sullivan County’s own Horatio Alger hero, Alan Gerry has shown us a way out of the Slough of Despair. His development of the site of the Woodstock Music Festival of 1969 has shown us that if you have something to offer, people will come. What Mr. Gerry’s plans for the future of the site of his A Day In The Garden music festival, accompanied by his purchase of surrounding land, presages many possibilities. A permanent music and dance show, similar to Tanglewood, Jacob’s Pillow and Wolf Trap? A theme park? A school for musicians? Plans have not been announced as yet, but the possibilities are endless.
People living on the western edge of our county have a most valuable piece of real estate; the Erie Railroad right-of-way. With a Mag Lev train traveling at a speed of 200 miles-per-hour, Sullivan County and its Pennsylvania neighbors in Pike and Wayne Counties could become a metropolitan area suburb.
We have facilities for most outdoor sports; canoeing down the rapids, fishing, golf, hunting, cross-country skiing biking, horse and car racing, camping — the list can go on and on. With the replacing of Route 17 with an interstate highway, all sorts of businesses can benefit. We have an excellent under-used airport. We have breathtaking scenic views. Our schools are generally good and we have a junior college.
The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Let’s go out and SCORE (Sullivan County Organized to Revive the Economy).
The first settlers who came here had only an axe, a rifle, a few belongings and determination. Let’s get off our butts and on our toes. The possibilities are out there, go find them!
We should think like French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who, in 1918, at the Second Battle of the Marne said, "My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, situation excellent, I am attacking!"
SCORE!
