Stepping back in ‘Time’

G’ville museum commemorates lost towns

Story by Adriana Serafino | Manor Ink

Grahamsville, NY – If you have ever explored the wonderful hiking trails in Sullivan County, you may have found yourself going past this small hamlet. Though Grahamsville has a population of just 427 people, it’s home to the renowned Little World’s Fair, the longest running independent fair in New York state, and is also home to an amazing institution called the Time and the Valleys Museum.

This museum is a place that is definitely worth a visit. It tells the stories of the towns that are now under the waters of the Neversink and Rondout reservoirs, resources that were built for New York City’s water system in the 1940s. Five communities were condemned, and that meant a total of about 1,500 people had to be relocated from their homes.

You can still find local people who were children at the time; they remember being forced to leave their homes as the towns were moved to new locations. Construction of the Delaware System, a network of four reservoirs supplying water to the city, began in 1937 and was finished in 1964.

“The museum is about how water has changed the area,” said Donna Steffens, director of the Time and the Valleys Museum for the past 15 years. “Our mission statement is ‘Connecting Water, People and the Catskills’.”

When the museum was created in 2004, it was located in Grahamsville’s town hall. It moved into its current three-floor facility in 2011, a building adjacent to the hamlet’s Daniel Pierce Library. The museum features many different interactive activities for kids, and admission includes a tour of a 1930s farmhouse and barn that sits behind the museum.

The museum is currently working on adding as many as 15 additional buildings. Today, visitors can see a spring house, an outhouse, a milk house, an electric plant and a barn. The new structures will include a root cellar, sawmill, a sap house, granary, pig pen, sheep shed, chicken coop and ice house.

The Time and the Valleys Museum is always looking for volunteers to help out with many different projects and events. If you are interested in learning more about the organization, visit timeandthevalleysmuseum.org or call 845-985-7700.