Burroughs Monument
Town of Shandaken, Ulster County, New York
Marker Inscription
JOHN BURROUGHS FOREST - Memorial to the beloved naturalist, author, American of Slabsides and the World, reforested by his neighbors and the boys of the Raymond Riordon School, and to be given their perpetual, joyous care under the direction of...
The Story
John Burroughs (1837–1921) was one of America's most beloved nature writers, a bearded, benevolent sage whose essays taught a generation to look closely at the birds, streams, and woods of the Catskills he called home. From his rustic cabin retreat, Slabsides, near West Park in Ulster County, he hosted admirers ranging from schoolchildren to presidents, and his gentle, observant prose helped popularize the conservation ethic taking root in the early twentieth century. After his death, neighbors and the boys of the nearby Raymond Riordon School planted this memorial forest in his honor, turning reforestation itself into a living tribute to the man who had asked Americans to cherish the land.
Why it matters
Burroughs helped shape the American conservation movement, making the close observation of nature a national pastime and lending moral weight to the era's push to protect wild places. This memorial forest embodies that legacy—honoring a writer not with stone but with the growing woods he spent his life defending.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the turn of the twentieth century, America was waking up to the idea that its wild places were not endless. Forests had been cleared, streams fouled, and whole landscapes reshaped by a century of expansion and industry. Out of that anxiety grew the conservation movement — a new conviction that nature was worth studying, cherishing, and protecting.
The Catskill Mountains of New York were one of the places where that idea took root. Their wooded slopes and clear streams, within reach of New York City, drew writers, artists, and vacationers looking for something the growing cities could not give them. Ulster County, with its ridges and hollows, was exactly the kind of country that could turn a curious visitor into a lifelong lover of the outdoors.
This was also the Progressive era, a time that placed great faith in education and in the moral improvement of the young. Schools took students into the woods, not just the classroom, and the notion that children should learn directly from nature was very much in the air. A memorial forest planted by schoolboys is a perfect artifact of that moment.
People & events
This spot honors John Burroughs, one of America's most beloved nature writers, who lived from 1837 to 1921. Bearded and gentle, he became a kind of national grandfather of the outdoors, teaching ordinary readers to look closely at a bird, a brook, or a stand of trees. His essays did not lecture; they invited, and generations of Americans learned to pay attention to the natural world through his patient, warm-hearted prose.
Burroughs was a son of this region, and he kept a rustic retreat elsewhere in the county where he wrote and welcomed a remarkable stream of visitors, from schoolchildren to the famous. The inscription's phrase — "American of Slabsides and the World" — captures the double truth of the man: rooted in one modest patch of New York countryside, yet read and loved far beyond it.
After his death, his neighbors and the boys of the nearby Raymond Riordon School answered his life's message in the most fitting way they could. Rather than carve a cold statue, they planted a forest — and pledged its "perpetual, joyous care." The memorial was meant to grow, to be tended by young hands, to become more alive with each passing year. It is a tribute that keeps doing the very thing the man asked of us.
Its place in the American story
Burroughs belongs to a small circle of writers and thinkers who taught America to love its own land. Alongside the era's naturalists and conservationists, he helped turn the close observation of nature into a popular pastime and lent moral weight to the movement to protect wild places. His gift was accessibility: he made the outdoors feel welcoming rather than forbidding.
A memorial forest is a distinctly American kind of monument, and a distinctly fitting one for a man like this. It says something about how the country chose to remember its nature writers — not only with plaques, but with living, growing woods that embody the values they championed. The trees themselves are the argument.
That the planting was entrusted to schoolboys matters, too. It carried Burroughs's message forward into another generation, making conservation not a finished monument but an ongoing responsibility handed from the old to the young. In that sense the memorial is less about the past than about everyone who would come after.
If you visit
Come to this corner of the Catskills the way Burroughs himself would have wanted — slowly, and with your eyes open. This is walking-and-looking country, not a place to rush through. Let the woods, the light through the leaves, and the sound of moving water do their quiet work.
Remember that a living forest changes with the seasons and the decades in a way that stone never can. The trees planted as a memorial have had generations to grow, and part of the meaning here is simply that they are still standing and still green. Notice them not as a backdrop but as the monument itself.
Bring a bird guide, or just your patience. Burroughs's whole gift was teaching people to notice small things — the flick of a warbler, the shape of a fern, the way a stream folds over a rock. The best way to honor him at a place named for him is to slow down and actually see the woods around you, the way he spent a lifetime urging his readers to do.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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