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Written by County Historian John Conway

... to form pony rafts to float down the Willowemoc and Beaverkill rivers to the Delaware at East Branch, where they were made into larger rafts for the trip down the Delaware River to Trenton and Philadelphia. ...

... r was cut and tied into rafts and floated down the river to Philadelphia where the logs were used as spaars in the shipbuilding industry. There were numerous sawmills in the town during its lumbering heyday ...

... before there was any extensive settlement in the town. There existed a trading post at Equinunk as early as 1750 and rafts of timber starting as far up stream as Rockland came past its shores before ...

... finding abundant wild turkey and naming the waterway "Kolikoonkill" (Turkey River). Not long after Ross's first settlement, the lumber rafting industry came into being. It began in 1764, when Daniel Skin ...

... Delaware River to Philadelphia for use in the burgeoning ship building industry in that city. Timber rafting, the first of the county’s three great industries—historians today call them the three Ts-- ...

... who was known as “Admiral” based on his fame as being the first person to pilot a lumber raft from Cochecton to Philadelphia. Tyler was said to have fathered twenty-two children. The Revolutionary War ...

... into the upper Beaverkill Valley wilderness. Their survival depended on subsistence farming, lumber rafted down the river to urban markets along the Delaware River and hauling hemlock bark to the large ...

... With one semester to go, he received a draft notice—but only after writing to the draft board to find out why he had not yet been called up. Harold could have avoided service during World War Two. He failed ...

... into the Army Air Force. With recent development by the armed forces of using radio detection in tracking enemy ships and aircraft, Bill was sent to the University of Wisconsin to receive training in the ...

... that included the word “Eddy” were so named by the early raftsmen. Narrowsburg was first known as Homans’ Eddy until Mr. Homan left the area. It was then renamed Big Eddy by the raftsmen because it is ...

... grew at this same spot when vast amounts of lumber began the journey down the Delaware from the holding bank located here. For over a century the rafting industry was a successful enterprise throughout ...

... that had become a highly familiar beacon to river rafts-men, railroaders and highway travelers as they passed through this section of the valley. The large brick chimney had once belched the exhaust ...

... with Oak trees, other hardwoods, pines and in New Jersey, white cedar. A profitable business developed by constructing rafts and floating these logs down the Delaware to Philadelphia and other emerging ...

... years ago with some partners, they purchased Eddy Farm on the Delaware River above Port Jervis. The hotel traced its history back to the days of the rafters and with his strong commitment to historical ...

... A lawyer, he once wrote about the Rafting industry along the Delaware for the Sullivan County Democrat and about 1910 began what eventually became six volumes of memoirs – the editing of which is another ...

... another, the army, for some bizarre reason, put him in charge of a bar, but Del’s real talents were eventually discovered and he was sent to a school to be trained to be a draftsman. Though his army career ...

... City. He had been born in Russia, but his father Harry decided to move the family to America to escape the poverty and prejudice of Russia and the threat of having his sons drafted into the Czarist army. ...

... invited interested persons to attend a meeting on April 12, 1949 to renew the Society. That spring Burbank was appointed Chairman of the committee to draft a proposed Constitution and a set of By-Laws ...

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