[This letter is the text of an old newspaper that was kindly sent to us by a reader named James Ayers. It recounts the displacement of people during the building of the reservoirs. It ran in the Catskill Mountain News on February 3, 1950.]

Hal Cartwright of Arkville made an amazing discovery one day last week. He told me the following story: I was cutting logs on the eastern slope of the mountain on our farm today with my partner, Louis Lane, when we noticed faint outlines of what looked like writing that had been carved in the trunk of a large beech tree.

“On examination we made out the following, ‘J. Breene shot a bear 1776.’ I thought the tree could not be 174 years old (time of the Revolution) so we cut another beech nearby which was slightly larger and counted the growth rings.

“There were 210 rings, so this tree was well over two centuries old. By comparing it with the size of the one with the carving we were able to deduce that the tree was indeed living when J. Breene made his proud claim to whatever future generation hunter might chance upon it.”

Hal says the beech which was cut was sound and healthy and from all appearances might have stood for another two centuries. What romance and history the Breene writing highlights! What a monument is a tree! What headstone to an early pioneer has stood up and remained legible for 174 years like this memorial to J. Breene and a bear?

Rub a magic lamp and step back beside Breene all poised to dispatch the bear with a single shot flintlock. It had to be death to the bear at first shot or death to the hunter a second or two later.

Next time you walk the hills and come to a great beech, lean against its smooth sides, look up into its sturdy limbs, sit down beside it and calculate it may have been planted by some red squirrel, bird or fall breeze of two, three, possible four centuries ago.

“Only God can make a tree.”

James Ayers

Kerhonkson