Tourism in Sullivan County dates back to at least 1840, and has consistently ranked at or near the top of the list of the county’s top industries since 1890, but the concept of fall foliage as a tourism tool is relatively new.

The idea of promoting the changing colors of the leaves on the trees to encourage tourists to visit an area gained popularity along with the automobile and the notion of the driving vacation, and although both the Berkshires in Massachusetts and the Poconos in Pennsylvania were promoting fall foliage tours as far back as the 1940s, the Catskills did not begin to cash in on the idea until the 1950s.

That is not to say, however, that Sullivan County’s autumnal beauty went unappreciated before then. As far back as 1825, the poet Alfred B. Street was an unabashed booster of the natural beauty of Sullivan County in general, and especially of the magnificence to be found in the forests of the Shawangunk Mountains and the Delaware Valley, of the Beechwoods and the Neversink Gorge as the leaves took on a wide array of colors under October skies.

Street was born in Poughkeepsie in 1811, but moved with his family to Monticello in 1825, and grew up there. He wrote mostly before tourism made its initial impact on the area’s economy, and that’s unfortunate because his vivid depictions of the attractiveness of local landscapes could have done much to encourage vacationers to make Sullivan their destination.

Literary critics of the day rated Street at “the top of his class” among descriptive poets– those who wrote predominantly about nature– and regarded him among the greatest American poets of his time, ranking him with Bryant and Emerson and Longfellow. He was so identified with and appreciated for his word-portraits of nature’s majesty that in reviewing one of his volumes of work, “The Protestant Churchman” noted that “he describes nature as seen in the depths of our noble forests, by the side of our glorious rivers, on the lakes and mountains, and he thus strikes a chord to which every heart responds.

“With all his truthfulness and life-like painting, with all his vivid and spirited sketching of nature, animate and inanimate, we feel that his genius would have been wasted and misapplied upon any other than home (American) scenes and events, and we are so far jealous of his muse, as to hope that his fine poetic powers will never be diverted from illustrating the history and scenery of his native land.”

Street himself acknowledged that he preferred to write about nature and credited spending his formative years in and around Monticello with inspiring him to do so.

“The early life of the author was spent in a wild and picturesque region,” he wrote of himself in the preface to the first collection of his poems. “Apart from the busy haunts of mankind, his eye was caught by the strongly marked and beautiful scenes by which he was surrounded, and to the first impressions thus made may be attributed the fact that his subjects relate so much to Nature and so little to Man. Instead, therefore, of aiming to depict the human heart, he has endeavored to sketch (however rudely and imperfectly) the features of that with which he was most familiar.”

Street wrote glowingly of such well-known Sullivan County landmarks as White Lake, Kiamesha Lake, the Willowemoc, the Callicoon Creek, and the Mongaup Falls– which rated two of his better known poems. And the changing world of autumn was one of the poet’s favorite subjects. The collection of his works published by Clark & Austin in 1845 includes such titles as “A September Stroll,” “An October Ramble,” “An Autumn Landscape,” “Indian Summer,” and “The Callicoon in Autumn.”

Perhaps none of Street’s poems better illustrates his reverence for nature– and Sullivan County’s untamed wilderness– than The Callicoon In Autumn, the first stanza of which says much about the Sullivan County that existed prior to the rise of the tanneries, the railroads or the resorts.

Far in the forest’s heart, unknown,

Except to sun and breeze,

Where solitude her dreaming throne

Has held for centuries;

Chronicled by the rings and moss

That tell the flight of years across

The seam’d and column’d trees,

This lovely streamlet glides along,

With tribute of eternal song!

The poem continues for three pages, with each line providing a unique look at the majesty nature bestowed upon the county as only Alfred B. Street could convey. Its final stanza speaks of the lingering memories of what once was.

Stream of the wilds! The Indian here,

Free as thy chainless flow,

Has bent against thy depths his spear,

And in thy woods his bow;

The beaver built his dome– but they,

The memories of an earlier day,

Like those dead trunks, that show

What once were mighty pines– have fled

With time’s unceasing, rapid tread.

The magnificent beauty that Street found so moving did not endure– the lumberman and the tanner of the late 19th century saw to that– but it has been reincarnated, to some extent at least, and a visit to Sullivan County in autumn is still inspiring.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian and a founder and president of The Delaware Company. Email him at jconway52@hotmail.com