Norman J. (Norm) Van Valkenburgh has slipped his earthly bonds. Of this remarkable Catskill native and champion of the public’s wild forests and wildernesses, I can locate no obituary, only a death notice of Norm’s passing in July 2023 in Orono, Maine at the age of 92 or 93. I join many in saying “I miss him.” He influenced me a lot.
Norm, surveyor, administrator, and advocate for the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserve, was one consequential state employee because through his conservation work he altered the landscapes of both the Adirondacks and the Catskills for the better. Moreover, Norm wrote part of that history – found in detailed books and articles devoted to the Forest Preserve. Norm was
a stickler for accuracy in his writing and surveying.
He fought in the Korean War, survived, and trained as a forester at the University of Maine at Orono. Married to Dot, Norm became employed by the former NYS Conservation Department and then the Department of Environmental Conservation.
Over 32 years beginning in 1955, Norm rose from state land laborer, to land surveyor, to chief of the bureau of land acquisition, to DEC regional director in New Paltz, and, finally, to director of DEC’s Division of Lands and Forests, retiring from DEC after 1986.
He went on to hike and privately survey countless forested tracts, as well as volunteer for nonprofits like the Catskill Center, the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks (now Protect the Adirondacks), the Adirondack Council, and others. He helped to found and then co-chaired the Adirondack Research Center and Library, which became part of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks.
To all, Norm spoke his mind. Both his mind and heart led him to the firm conviction that Article XIV, Section 1 of the NYS Constitution – the “forever wild” provisions of our state constitution –
meant what it said and should be faithfully observed and enforced. And he did everything in his power to grow the acreage of both Forest Preserve.
I estimate that Norm in some way was directly responsible for growing the Forest Preserve by over 100,000 acres between 1972 and 1985, the year of the Forest Preserve Centennial in which he played a significant role.
That year Norm, still Division Director, published Land Acquisition for New York State: An Historical Perspective (published by the Catskill Center). Norm dedicated this highly detailed historical account “in commemoration of the Centennial of the State Forest Preserve, the preeminent state accomplishment in the preservation and protection of public open space.”
In retirement, Norm authored a dozen mystery novels, with surveyors as protagonists at work in the Catskills he knew so intimately.
Born in the heart of the Catskill Mountains, Norm was a genius in solving the mysteries of old survey lines, corners, and property boundaries. In his DEC positions, Norm kept a keen eye for important lands coming on the market. His positions at the DEC happened to overlap with public approval of the 1960, 1962 and 1972 park, recreation, land acquisition and environmental bond acts.
With these publicly approved funds available, Norm maintained as close a working relationship as he could with landowners who could contact him if qualifying lands were up for sale.
The landscape of both the Adirondacks and Catskills is dotted with Forest Preserve lakes, ponds, campgrounds, mountainsides and wild roadside forest scenery which, if they took the form of
landscape paintings Norm could have signed because he was directly responsible for their coming into public ownership from willing sellers. In many ways, Norm has been as influential on this landscape as famed 19th century Adirondack surveyor Verplanck Colvin.
In fact, Norm may have looked upon Colvin as a 19th century model for his own work. In 1980, Norm found an unpublished Colvin survey in storage at DEC. This Colvin survey covered 1898-1899 and was Colvin’s last. DEC, unwilling to spend the time and money to publish, gave Norm permission to have it privately published by the Adirondack Research Library of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks.
The Library’s Maryde King accomplished the work in 1989, and Norm wrote a detailed introduction summarizing not just the 1898 survey but all of Colvin’s surveys.
In the late 1980s, I was on the job at the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks and eagerly joined a hike to Mounts Colvin and Blake with Norm and noted Keene Adirondack guide
Jim Goodwin. Both men knew each other because each had worked with the other on the acquisition of Noonmark Mountain and other lands from the Ausable Club in 1978.
The day turned misty, then rainy, but the two men insisted on continuing to climb both peaks named in honor of the great surveyors Verplanck Colvin and Mills Blake. Because Norm and Jim had some heart history, on the hike down I tramped ahead to inform their wives they were OK.
The women looked and me and laughed. They had long ago ceased being unnecessarily worried about their husband-explorers.
Like Sherlock Holmes, Norm preferred to do his work behind the scenes. Be it Lake Lila or Noonmark Mountain in the Adirondacks, or Kaaterskill Falls, Colgate Lake, and the entire mountain escarpment of the northeastern Catskills, Norm was responsible for these becoming parts of the Forest Preserve.
Unlike Sherlock Holmes, Norm has no Watson to chronicle these and other achievements. Instead, Norm chronicled them himself, without attribution. His Land Acquisition for New York State: An Historical Perspective illuminates thousands of details about land acquisition for the Forest Preserve, or for other purposes, but nowhere is the personal pronoun “I” employed.
Other works include The Forest Preserve of New York State in the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains: A Short History (published in cooperation with the Adirondack Research Library) and
The Catskill Park: Inside the Blue Line (published in cooperation with the Catskill Center, with Christopher Olney).
For the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, Norm wrote two informative booklets: The Forest and the Law – Inquiry into the Constitutional and Legislative Background of
the State Forest Preserve (with Al Forsyth) and Unit Management Planning for Wilderness Management.
Without Norm’s writing, many an Adirondack and Catskill wilderness advocate would be up a creek without a paddle.
In 2007, Norm received the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks’ highest honor, the Howard Zahniser Adirondack Award, for his decades of work to acquire, safeguard and chronicle the Forest Preserve. In his acceptance speech at the Gideon Putnam Hotel in Saratoga Springs, Norm typically downplayed his own role and credited past commissioners and colleagues who had helped him over the years.
The award was as much for Norm’s keen interpretation of the Adirondack (and Catskill) State Land Master Plans as for his land protection. In 2008, Norm led a seminar about the history of snowmobile policies on the Forest Preserve. It was a tour de force and resulted in a lot of dialogue about the state’s inability to maintain or limit public motorized uses of the Forest Preserve to the extent existing in 1972. But that’s another story.
Long after his retirement, Norm took me and fellow Adirondack Wild staffer Ken Rimany on a memorable tour of his Catskills. In his disciplined fashion, Norm had written out our itinerary in advance. The tour would start in Palenville, and take in Kaaterskill Falls, South Lake, the site of the Old Catskill Mountain House, his birthplace in Tannersville, his former home he shared with his wife Dot in West Kill, and eventually reach Arkville, and return east via Ashokan Reservoir and Woodstock.
For hours into our journey, there was hardly a tract that we visited that Norm did not have a hand in acquiring for the public, or surveying, or both. We had lunch with a landowner near Arkville.
He had hired Norm to survey the boundaries and corners of this land stretching over 10,000 acres and encompassing two mountains bordering the Forest Preserve. The land was not for sale, and Norm never pressured the owner in any way to sell.
What was apparent was the deep respect that the landowner and Norm had for each other because each cared deeply about the land, its stewardship and its future. Each wished the next generation to have the chance to know this landscape as intimately as they did.
Photos, from above: Norm Van Valkenburgh above Kaaterskill Falls; and Norm, left, with Adirondack Wild’s Ken Rimany at the site of the former Catskill Mountain House (photos by David Gibson).
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