THE CATSKILL GEOLOGISTS BY PROFESSORS ROBERT AND JOHANNA TITUS - The Mills Mansion 1 its Geology and its Planned View

CATSKILL - We spend a lot of time across the Hudson River, down at the bottom of the valley. There’s so much to see there. We never get tired of visiting the great mansions that line the eastern shore of the Hudson. This was the land of the Astors, Vanderbilts, and Roosevelts, but most of all, it was the land of the Livingstons. Quite a few branches of that family tree lived there. Many of them built grand mansions on magnificent estates with fabulous views of the Hudson with the Catskills beyond. They are all steeped in history and, surprisingly, a good deal of that is geological. We would like to spend the next month visiting the Mills Mansion, often called Staatsburgh. We know, we know - this is outside of Mountain Eagle territory, but we do think that there is a lot to learn there. 

The story of Staatsburgh began in the 1790’s when an early house was built there. It burned and it was replaced by a 25 room Greek Revival home in 1832. That was inherited by Ruth Livingston Mills, and she lived there with her husband Ogden Mills. They expanded Staatsburgh into a 65 room Beaux Arts, Gilded Age Mansion during the 1890s. It has stood towering over a relatively steep riverside slope ever since. See our first photo. That’s Staatsburgh, way up there, just left of center. In 1938 Mills descendants donated it to New York State. Now the mansion and the grounds are open to the public.

So, maybe you are asking where is the geology? The answer is that it’s right there, in the view. Staatsburgh was positioned at the top of that hill so as to provide it with a fine viewshed. There is a sweeping and picturesque vision all the way down the slope to the Hudson, with the Catskills in the far distance. We are guessing that, way back then, there were fewer trees down at the bottom so the view of the distant river was even better. Perhaps you are still asking “where is the geology?”. Well, it is still in that view. We walked out onto that slope, armed with a barbeque skewer, and went to work with it. Yep, a barbeque skewer; that’s an important piece of scientific equipment always found in the back of our car. We took the skewer with us and found that most of the time, it was easy to slide it into the ground. That happens when there are few or no cobbles or gravel in the ground. And that is typical of a landscape underlain by silty lake sediments. It helps a lot if it has been raining recently.

Lake sediments!? What are lake sediments doing here? This is a river valley, not a lake basin. The answer to that question is that this used to be a lake basin. That was about 14,000 years ago when the glaciers of the Ice Age were melting. If you visit the Mills Mansion (oops, Staatsburgh), stand on its west side and gaze towards the river and beyond the Catskills. In your mind’s eye imagine a lake stretching out across most of that. Yes, it was a big lake. That was Glacial Lake Albany. It extended south almost to New York City and north past Albany. Here it was about ten miles wide, east to west.

We are guessing that the Mills family did not know much about this, nor did their landscape architects. But the view here is typical of what people worked with when designing most Hudson Valley estates. This view is something that architects call a “planned view.” We spent a lot of time talking about these in our recent book “The Hudson Valley Schools of Art and Their Ice Age Origins.” You should learn about planned views; they are an important part of our Hudson Valley culture. And this is a very good one.

Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their Facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at “thecatskillgeologist.com.”