Slide Mountain Wilderness Area

The Slide Mountain Wilderness Area is, at 47,500 acres (190 km²), the largest tract of state-owned Forest Preserve in New York's Catskill Park, and the largest area under any kind of wilderness area protection between the Adirondacks and the southern Appalachians. It is located in the towns of Shandaken, Denning and Olive in Ulster County.

Location

Within those three towns, the Slide Wilderness might be better described as contained within the lands bounded on the north roughly by Esopus Creek and Route 28, the east by Ulster County Route 42 (known as either Sundown Road or Peekamoose Road, depending on what town it's in) almost to the shores of Ashokan Reservoir, the west by Ulster County Route 47, and on the south by Sugarloaf Road and Red Hill Road.

The area's wilderness character is buffered not only by restrictive local zoning and conservation of neighboring private lands but also by bordering on two other large state-owned tracts, the Big Indian-Beaverkill Wilderness Area to the west and the Sundown Wild Forest to the east.

Resources

Physical

According to Catskill forest historian Michael Kudish, the Slide wilderness contains the most extensive tract of first-growth forest in the Catskills. Much of the area remained out of reach during the peak years of logging and barkpeeling from Eastern Hemlock trees, to make tannin for leather production in the mid-19th century and thus remained largely untouched. Indeed, the upper valley of the East Branch of the...
Read More