[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 July 1, 1949.]

When I read last week the dead line of the life of the East Branch valley, I took a ride from Margaretville to Downsville to look again at the familiar spots I have learned to know so well and the neighbors I love.

That evening, I got my trout rod and fished the delightful pools between Arena and Shavertown, anxious somehow not to miss even once the happiness which comes each and every time I wade these sweet waters.

Wood thrushes were calling to each other in those lonesome flute-like notes which can best be enjoyed a quarter mile away. There must be untold hundreds and hundreds of these wonderful singers along the East Branch.

The mountainsides were spotted great bouquets of laurel. Wildlife fathers and mothers and their little young played about with little fear. A doe came down from the hillside to drink. She nibbled at leaves on small trees along the bank. A muskrat, mouth full of grass, swam across my pool and scared a trout which had been rising.

Blackberry bushes via with laurel to make great bouquets. Never was there promise of more berries. A fish hawk circled above, a Kingfisher chattered its shrill way upstream, tip-ups teetered along the sandy shore, small birds darted in and out from the bushes along the water and from those which hung over the stream.

A half hour later I turned to watch a dragon fly going upstream with a long string of eggs hanging from her body. When they hit the water, I thought a trout might grab them and this would whet his appetite. As I did so there was a lunge in the current behind me but I turned to late to see the splash and know where the monster was located. He did not come again.

Day dreaming and fishing I was stingy of the time. Would that I could make every hour twice as long. Darkness was not far away when I could no longer see my fly and would have to return another afternoon. Darkness did come faster than the fish and I waded upstream, climbed the bank and made my way to the automobile. After I folded up the rod and put away the rough boots. I opened wide the windows to let in the river aroma and dreamed again.

I dreamed last week's dry spell was far in the future. The dam I thought had been completed and the reservoir filled for years. Then came a drought, the waters receded and to sight came the foundations of today's buildings, in my dream, buried 10 years under water.

What a change of scene, gone the beautiful river, the trees and vegetation which mark its boundaries, gone the hospitable homes, the great barns, only their foundations showing.

Gone the cowpaths on the mountainside which I traveled as a teenager – then called "youngun,"– gone the patches of woodland, only the stumps showing, gone a great smooth beech where a sharp knife cut her and his initials, gone every landmark but the blue sky above and the curve of the mountain horizon.

There are two years more, dear folks, to enjoy it. I hope to take a full measure of comfort in those two. When I am driven to other scenes, I hope there will be compensations even though there can never be another East Branch valley of trout and fun.

Yours truly,

The Mountaineer

James Ayers

Kerhonkson