ALLUVIAL DIVISION, 
43 
On a plain near Catskill, called Jefferson plain, the ground was covered with water to such 
a depth that it covered the floors of many barns several inches deep ; and on a field of about 
thirty acres, the water accumulated to a depth of about eighteen inches, and it was so situated 
that it could not derive it from adjacent grounds. This water nearly all flowed off at one place, 
and formed a gully, which at the edge of the plain was about one hundred and ninety feet 
broad, and between eighty and ninety feet deep. Several other ravines were formed in a 
similar manner in the loose materials, sand and gravel which formed the plain. One of them 
was ninety yards long, two to six rods wide, and ten to forty feet deep. 
At Wolcott’s mills, two large gullies were formed near each other. The eastern gully is 
twenty rods long; it is about two rods wide at the commencement, and ten or twelve feet 
deep, and lays bare a ledge of red sandstone rock. When this gully was formed, the current 
ran directly against and by the side of a house, A man, in stepping from the door to remove 
a sick woman, and where the water was supposed to be about two feet deep, was precipitated 
into the deep water formed by the current washing away the soil, and was hurried onwards 
by the turbulent flood, and drowned. A vast quantity of earth, stones and rocks, some of 
them more than a ton in weight, were washed down the gully into the creek, and now form 
a bank one hundred feet long, seventy broad and eight or ten feet deep, above the former bed 
of the stream. There was no stream previous to the storm, where this ravine was formed. 
The western gully was occasioned by the prodigious rise and enlargement of a small brook, 
the usual width of which does not exceed a yard. A plaster mill, grist mill and large distillery 
were undermined and borne away on the flood, and the deposit of rocks and pebbles greater 
than from the other ravine. It is one hundred and eighty feet long, one hundred wide, and 
five or six deep.* 
Many other interesting details of the same storm, removing rocks of many tons weight, 
causing slides on the hills, etc. are described.! 
Alluvial action on Black creek, Ulster county. Evidences of recent alluvial action are 
manifest in the valley of Black creek, about one mile south of Esopus. The heavy rains of 
April, 1839, produced great devastation throughout ihis part of the country. At the place 
mentioned, and for half a mile above, the flats along the creek were covered with beds of 
gravel and sand from two foot to five feet deep, the old bed of the stream was entirely filled 
up, and the creek was scooping out a new channel, at the time of my visit, through the beds 
of alluvion which it had so recently deposited. A mill-dam half a mile above the bridge where 
the river road crosses Black creek, was washed away, and the bed of the creek cut down 
more than twenty feet lower than it was before, so as to leave the bed of the old mill-pond high 
and dry twenty feet above the level of the present bed of the creek. From this deep new cut 
of the creek, and the extensive slides of the high steep banks of gravel and sand, the alluvial 
matters spread over the meadows below have been derived. 
Dwight, Sill. Journal, Vol. 3, p. 135. 
t Id. Vol. 3, p. 136 et seq. 
