A Legacy of Conservation
What a noble gift to man are the forests! What a debt of gratitude and admiration we owe for their utility and their beauty!
— Susan Fenimore Cooper, Rural Hours (1850)
When Henry David Thoreau sat down in his cabin to write Walden, he very likely consulted a copy of Rural Hours by Susan Fenimore Cooper. The daughter of James Fenimore Cooper and granddaughter of the founder of Cooperstown, spent a year observing the human and natural landscape around her beloved Glimmerglass—the name her father used for Lake Otsego in his Leatherstocking Tales—and set her observations in writing for future generations. Her work developed the themes of nature and conservation that her father first introduced in his early American novels.
Important as these works of classic American literature and early nature writing are, they are just a waypoint in the long history of the Otsego Region and central New York. The first inhabitants of the region likely settled here for many of the same reasons we did—its natural beauty and its fertile land. The towns and villages that grew up in these valleys and along the lakes and streams slowly developed deep historical significance and cultural resonance that have echoed down the generations, adding to the urgency that these places not be lost to the fast pace of thoughtless development.
The beauty and majesty described by James Fenimore Cooper and his daughter is still easily recognizable in the landscape today, thanks to the conservation efforts of a long lineage of local residents. Beginning in the mid 1800s, Edward Clark, inspired by Cooper, initiated the pioneering, landscape-scale conservation efforts that restored the extensive forested ridge along Otsego Lake’s eastern shore.
While the conservation efforts of the Clark family are well known locally, the stories of many other conservation-minded residents are often overlooked or unspoken, though they are no less important. These include the families that planted thousands of trees on the Forest of the Dozen Dads in the Town of Middlefield during the Great Depression; Betty and Wilber Davis, who established a 200-acre state park in Town of Westford on the ridge between Elk Creek and Cherry Valley in 2001; and the Hall family, who helped found the General Jacob Morris State Forest in the Butternut Valley in 2006.
The history of the Otsego Land Trust, which was formed in 1988, is another of the conservation stories that stitch our landscape together. With the help of some fifty families who have partnered with us, we have been able to protect over 6,000 acres throughout the region to date. This story—the story of protecting the places in the Otsego Region you care about—continues to unfold and is one you can be a part of. Read the story; join the story [link on web page] [for PDF: www.otsegolandtrust.org]
— Susan Fenimore Cooper, Rural Hours (1850)
