As some of you know I sometimes share local history on my page as I am a social studies teacher by trade.  Over past years I discovered through my research many local legends and folktales that I have difficulties filing in any specific genre.  Last year I stopped ignoring these tales and embraced them.  I created a presentation titled "Restless Souls, Curious Creatures, and Other Haunts of the Hudson Valley" and presented it at a local theater around Halloween 2011.  

Today I spent the day at a local school presenting the production to students in celebration of Halloween.  I realized during the presentation today that one of the stories would be a great post for my page tonight, and though it has nothing to do with weather, it is an (hopefully) enjoyable and educational experience for all.  Happy Halloween everyone!

Locals and tourists alike lay eyes upon the Hudson River and awe at the beauty and solace contained within the calm sparkling waters.  Many forget the history of the river before Hudson placed his name on nearly 400 years ago.  

Henry Hudson, the Dutch captain of the Half Moon, ventured up the then named North, Nassau, or Great River in 1609 in search of the Northwest Passage to China.  The river contained beauty much like its appearance today; jagged cliffs and lush trees lined the waters from the mouth of the Atlantic in the south to Lake Tear of the Clouds in the north.  There were no traces of civilization except for small bands of Native Americans visible on the shoreline.

Henry Hudson did not keep a captains log; instead, his first mate, Robert Juet (and future mutineer) kept a journal of the voyage up the picturesque river.  I will share excerpts of his journal to help tell this story.  

On September 12, 1609, the Half Moon anchored not far below the present-day city of Poughkeepsie, and found that canoes full of natives were coming to “betray [the crew of the Half Moon];” however, though the natives were likely wishing to greet the travelers the crew did not allow the natives to board the ship.  Instead they pitched their sails and continued on their way up the river.  The adventure continued as far as it could go before the river quickly became shallow not far above the modern city of Albany.  After trading with the natives and failing to discover a passage west in the Adirondacks the ship sailed south down the river.

On October 1, near the present-day city of Newburgh, the Half Moon met the same group of natives that had wished to betray them on September 12th.  They allowed the group to board in order to trade.  The situation quickly escalated.  

Robert Juet describes the encounter, “This after-noone, one Canoe kept hanging under our sterne with one man in it, which we could not keepe from thence, who got up by our Rudder to the Cabin window, and stole out my Pillow, and two Shirts, and two Bandeleeeres.  Our Masters Mate shot at hime, and [struck] him on the [breast], and killed him.  Whereupon all the rest fled away, some in their Canoes, and some leapt out of them into the water.  Then one of them that swamme got hold of our Boat, thinking to overthrow it.  But our Cooke tooke a Sword, and cut off one of his hands, and he was drowned” (Juet).

After this hostile encounter with the natives the crew was vigilant to any attempt by the locals to board the ship.  On October 2nd “…two Canoes full of men, with their Bowes and Arrowes shot at us after our sterne: in recompence whereof we discharged sixe Muskets, and killed two or three of them.  Then above an hundred of them came to a point of Land to shoot at us.  There I shot a Falcon at them, and killed two of them: whereupon the rest fled into the Woods.  Yet they manned off another Canoe with nine or ten men, which came to meet us.  So I shot at it also a Falcon, and shot it through, and killed one of them.  There our men with their Muskets killed three of foure more of them,” not long after the attacks, the ship had pushed far enough down the river to leave them behind (Juet 207-208).  Finally on that day, the crew reached the Atlantic and began their trip back to Europe.

We now return to present day to further this story. 397 years after Henry Hudson traveled up the river I was made aware at a local history meeting of a more recent incident relating to the Half Moon.   An elderly gentleman heard that I was researching local history and told me that he experienced something that I would never believe.  The story goes as follows:

This man, which we shall name Samuel, was spending the day fishing on the shore of the Hudson River just north of Highland, NY.  As evening approached he could hear a storm rumbling in the distance.  He gathered his things and began the walk south down the tracks to head home.   

As he wandered he glanced at the river and noticed a ship traveling north near the west shore of the Hudson.  He stopped to watch the ship as it had an appearance that he had never witnessed before.  It was wooden and had three empty masts (no sails).  He told me that it appeared to be an old schooner from yesteryear, something not very common on the Hudson River today.

Slowly the ship approached where he was standing next to the river.  It became apparent that this ship had no crew on the deck.  In fact there was no sound until the ship came within 50 feet of him.  The first thing he heard was creaking, as if the ship was drifting in a heavy sea, but it was not touching the water.  He said it seemed to glide above the surface and did not create a wake.  

Samuel was overcome by awe as the ship methodically floated up the river against the tide.  The storm was coming in fast and he soon lost sight of the schooner in the darkness and the rain.  He did, however, tell me that when the lightning flashed he could see the silhouette of the hull drifting north on the river.   

Have you ever wanted to see a giant impact crater from an asteroid but thought you would have to drive thousands of miles to see it?

If your answer is yes just take a drive to Panther Mountain in the Catskills of New York.

Yes, it is a mountain, but it is also part of an asteroid impact crater.  There are a few hills and valleys inside the crater but Panther Mountain is the general identifier.

In the 1970’s a scientist from the New York State Geological Survey (Yngvar Isachsen) was studying an aerial imagery of the Catskills and recognized the following:

“I first noticed this in the early 1970s," he says. "I had a grant from NASA to study features on this image (see below). See all these squiggly lines? These are valleys formed by streams. That's what you'd expect a valley to look like. All squiggly, going in no particular direction. Now here's where we are. That's the valley formed by the Esopus Creek and its tributary, Woodland Creek. It forms an almost perfect circle around Panther Mountain. So I asked myself, what on Earth would account for that?"

Source: http://discovermagazine.com/2000/aug/featcrater  < this is also a further and in depth read for those of you that are interested.

I would end up finding this the EXACT same way a few years ago just by browsing around the area on Google Earth. 

Can you see it?

So here is the story behind this crater- it is far more exciting that a rock hitting the dirt in some desert somewhere and creating a hole.

Around 375-400 millions years ago the Catskills did not exist yet.  The GIGANTIC Acadian Mountains were rising where the present day Taconic Mountains line the east side of the Hudson Valley. As the the Acadian Mountains established themselves they began to erode and weather (pieces broke off).

Around the mountains sediment began to pile up.  At the time there was a sea surrounding the Acadians so the sediment stacked up on the shores of the water.  A lot of that sediment was washed down into where the Catskills are today (south-central NY).  The sea that existed at the time, the Kaskaskia Sea, slowly had its western shore moved farther and farther East due to the sediments falling on the shore. 

While this was happening, BOOM, the asteroid hit the Earth right in the sediments on the west edge of the Acadian Mountains.   You can see the Acadian mountain range and the Kaskaskia Sea in this image.  The asteroid struck just about at the tip of the A in "Acadian."

Eventually the uplift that created the Acadian Mountains ceased and the mountains eroded so much that the area that would be the Catskills became taller than the Acadians.  Some peaks of this "new" mountain range reached 7,000 feet.  Over time the sediments from the Acadian Mountains that washed into the Catskill area turned into solid rock. The weight of the rocks above the crater caused the lower level to fracture and create extremely easy-to-erode joints along the edge.  Think of it as if you were to push down with your hand in fresh cement.  Your hand is the asteroid and the cement is the sediment from the Acadian Mountains.  Once it hardens you would be left with a crater.  Fill the crater with pebbles and sand and then push it down with extreme force.  The sediment (pebbles and sand) would turn into rock.  The edge of where that hand print was will easily break apart if subjected to water.  THAT is what happened with the asteroid crater in the Catskills.

But it still wasn't over...the continents of the Earth collided and huge uplift (rising) took place across the land. 

The “Catskills,” along with much of the Appalachians, became taller than the Himalayas during this collision with Africa and Europe.  The mountains turned into a uniform plateau (flat surface) with only a few peaks.  Streams and creeks began cutting the plateau to form valleys.  Weathering trimmed down the peaks to a height similar to where they are today.

The third and final transformation came with the ice age 15,000 years ago.  Glaciers covered all but probably two peaks in the Catskills (Slide Mountain and West Kill) and ground down their summits and edges.  When the glaciers melted they left multiple lakes that many enjoy visiting today.  Finally the Catskills looked like they do today.

At the base (inside) of one of these Catskill Mountains is the impact crater.  The Esopus Creek slowly eroded away the rocks at the edge of the crater rim (think about the cement example) and cut a perfect circle around the impact crater.  The Esopus follows Route 28 on the map above.  Unknowingly, early settlers settled down around the giant crater because they were following the river for water and food. 

I live near this crater and you do not realize it is a crater at all by driving around it.  It simply looks like a beautiful sloping mountain.  The reality is that deep beneath the mountains there is a huge hole that probably has remnants of the asteroid that struck hundreds of millions of years ago. 

My guess, and this is entirely a guess, is that in the future (100 millions years from now) the Catskill Mountains will erode to the point that the original impact crater is exposed until, again, deposition and erosion creates either a plain over the crater or a new mountain range.

Here is a photo of a part of Panther Mountain that I took in 2009:

As you can see it does not look anything like a crater; however, I promise you, an impact crater that is 375 million years old sits beneath this beautiful piece of geography just waiting to be exposed to the air once again.