Woodchuck Lodge, Catskills Home of John Burroughs
by Catherine Sherman
Title
Woodchuck Lodge, Catskills Home of John Burroughs
Artist
Catherine Sherman
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
"Woodchuck Lodge, Catskills Home of John Burroughs" by Catherine Sherman
Woodchuck Lodge, also known as John Burroughs Memorial State Historic Site, is in Roxbury in the western Catskills of Delaware County, New York. It was the summer and later retirement home of naturalist John Burroughs (1837-1921). He is buried here, at the foot of a rock on which he played as a child. There is a panoramic view of mountains from the gravesite.
"In 1913, Henry Ford purchased the Roxbury farm as a present for John Burroughs. The property included three bedroom farmhouse built by John Burroughs' brother Curtis in 1863. Later, after naturalist John Burroughs rented the old farmhouse from his nephew, John Burroughs, son of his brother Curtis, he named it "Woodchuck Lodge" after what he deemed were pesky woodchucks who had a cordon of woodchuck holes all over the nearby fields. John's nephew, John (the son of Curtis), ran the farm from the main house."
It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1962.
Burroughs grew up on a farm near Woodchuck Lodge, which was built when John was fifteen.
As Burroughs worked on the family farm he was enthralled by the activity of birds and other wildlife. In his later years he credited his life as a farm boy for his subsequent love of nature and feeling of kinship with all rural things.
In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs' special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of "a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world." "The Complete Writings of John Burroughs" totals 23 volumes.
Burroughs accompanied many personalities of the time in his later years, including Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Henry Ford (who gave Burroughs an automobile, one of the first in the Hudson Valley), Harvey Firestone, and Thomas Edison
“These hills fathered and mothered me. I am blood of their blood and bone of their bone, and why should I not go back to them in my last years?” ~ John Burroughs, Literary Naturalist, 1910
Featured in "Philanthropic Artists for a Cause" group (10/31/2018); "The Niche" group (11/19/2018); "New FAA Uploads" group (11/19/2018)
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October 30th, 2018
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