New York State Forest Preserve Centennial
Town of Hunter, Greene County, New York
Marker Inscription
1885 1985 This tablet commemoriates the one hundredth anniversary of New York State's Forest Preserve. The surrounding mountains, streams, and woodlands remain a legacy from the past protected by the Consitution of New York State. They represent a...
The Story
In 1885 New York set aside its wild Adirondack and Catskill lands as a Forest Preserve, and in 1894 wrote a remarkable promise into the state constitution: these woods would be kept "forever wild." This tablet, placed in 1985 amid the Catskill peaks of Greene County, marks a full century of that pledge. It was one of the boldest conservation experiments in the nation—an era when Americans were only beginning to wonder whether the forests they were rapidly cutting might not be endless after all.
Why it matters
New York's "forever wild" Forest Preserve was a pioneering act of American conservation, protecting millions of acres by constitutional mandate decades before the idea of preserving wild land became national policy.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This tablet stands in the Town of Hunter, high among the Catskill peaks of Greene County, New York — steep, forested mountains that had been logged, tanned, and quarried hard through the nineteenth century. By the Reconstruction and Gilded Age era, Americans were beginning to ask an unsettling question: what if the forests weren't endless after all? The Catskills and the Adirondacks were being stripped of timber and bark, and their watersheds — vital to the rivers and canals below — were visibly at risk.
Out of that anxiety came a bold answer. In 1885, New York set aside its wild Adirondack and Catskill lands as a Forest Preserve, to be kept as public wild land rather than sold off and cut over. It was a striking act for its time, when the prevailing habit was to exploit natural resources as fast as possible.
The promise grew stronger still. In 1894 the state wrote protection directly into its constitution — the famous "forever wild" clause, Article XIV — declaring these lands must be kept forever as wild forest. This tablet, placed in 1985, marks a full century of that pledge, from the founding in 1885 to its centennial.
People & events
The story this tablet commemorates is not about a single hero but about a decision — a state choosing, again and again, to protect its wild land. The 1885 establishment of the Forest Preserve was the first step; the 1894 constitutional guarantee that the forest be kept "forever wild" was the one that gave the promise its remarkable staying power.
That constitutional language matters because of what it prevents. By binding the protection to the state constitution rather than ordinary law, New Yorkers made it far harder for any future legislature or interest to quietly undo it. Changing it requires amending the constitution itself — a deliberately high bar that has guarded these mountains for well over a century.
In 1985, New Yorkers marked the hundredth anniversary of that founding by placing this tablet amid the very peaks it protects. Its dedication speaks of the surrounding mountains, streams, and woodlands as a legacy handed down and safeguarded — a rare kind of monument, one that celebrates not a battle or a person but a sustained public commitment to leave something wild alone.
Its place in the American story
New York's "forever wild" Forest Preserve was a pioneering act of American conservation. It protected vast stretches of mountain land by constitutional mandate — and it did so decades before the idea of deliberately preserving wild country became settled national policy. In an age of rapid cutting and clearing, that was a genuinely radical wager on restraint.
What makes the New York experiment distinctive is the strength of the guarantee. Many places set aside parks and forests; New York bound its promise into the highest law of the state, so that protection did not depend on the mood of any single administration. It is one of the boldest and most durable conservation commitments in the country's history.
Stand this tablet against the broader American story and it reads as an early, confident answer to a question the whole nation was only beginning to face: whether a growing, hungry country could choose to keep some of its land wild on purpose. New York answered yes, in writing, and has kept that word for well over a hundred years.
If you visit
Read the tablet, then lift your eyes to what it's really pointing at — the mountains, streams, and woodlands all around you. That's the actual monument. The bronze only explains why the forest at your back still stands uncut: a promise made in 1885 and written into the state constitution in 1894.
Let the two dates on the tablet, 1885 and 1985, sink in as you look around. You're standing in the middle of a century-long — now far longer — experiment in leaving land alone, and the quiet, deep forest is the proof that it worked.
This is a natural stop on any trip into the Catskills, where hiking trails, waterfalls, and high peaks are the main attractions. Let the marker add meaning to the scenery: the wildness you came to enjoy isn't an accident or a leftover, but a deliberate inheritance, protected by a promise that generations of New Yorkers have chosen to keep.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Establishment of the New York State Forest Preserve (1885)
- · New York Constitution "forever wild" clause (Article XIV)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Maurice D. Hinchey
Town of Shandaken, NY
Maurice D. Hinchey devoted nearly four decades to public service, first in the New York State Assembly and then representing the Hudson Valley and Catskills in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2013. A tireless advocate for the environment, he is widely remembered for championing the cleanup of the Hudson River and for defending the wild lands of the Catskills — the very region where this monument stands. His long career bridged local conservation battles and national policy.
Tri-State Marker
Litchfield, CT
This monument stands where Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut come together, its faces inscribed with the neighboring states' names and the 1898 date of the survey that set the corner. New England's colonial-era boundaries were argued over for generations, and only in the late nineteenth century were many finally re-surveyed and permanently monumented. The unmarked fourth face is a small surveyor's convention, pointing where there is no third state to name.
First Plastic
City of Albany, NY
In 1868, Albany inventor John Wesley Hyatt was chasing a $10,000 prize offered for a substitute for increasingly scarce ivory billiard balls. His answer was celluloid — a moldable material made from nitrocellulose and camphor that is widely regarded as the first commercially successful synthetic plastic. Produced here by the Albany Billiard Ball Company, it turned a parlor-game shortage into the opening chapter of the modern plastics age.
Burden Iron Lower Works
City of Troy, NY
In the booming iron city of Troy, New York, Henry Burden's works harnessed water power to mass-produce horseshoes at an astonishing rate — machinery so productive it is said to have helped shoe the Union cavalry during the Civil War. The lower works forged these famous horseshoes for the army in wartime and for civilian markets after. Troy's ironworks helped make the upper Hudson Valley a powerhouse of 19th-century American industry.