Lumberjacks have been hanging out in these woods since 1760.

It all started when Daniel Skinner, a Connecticut Yankee, came to settle in the vicinity of Cochecton on lands that belonged to Connecticut by virtue of old land grants. A prosperous landowner, he imagined a new way to get timbers to Philadelphia for ship masts and lumber. His first raft consisted of six 70-foot white pine logs lashed together.

According to “Quinlan’s History of Sullivan County,” published in 1873, Skinner was well respected. “He was honored in a jocose way by the hardy men who followed his example. By general consent, he was constituted Admiral of all the waters of the river in which a raft could be taken to market and no one was free to engage in the business until he had the Admiral’s consent. This was gained by presenting Skinner with a bottle of wine, when liberty was granted the applicant to go to Philadelphia as a fore-hand. To gain the privilege of going as a steersman, another bottle was necessary, on the receipt of which the Admiral gave full permission to navigate all the channels of the river.”

As the industry grew, the rafts grew larger in size, ranging from 16- to 36-feet wide and 100- to 200-feet long. Each raft had the capacity of 30,000 to 100,000 board feet of logs. Long heavy oars in the front and back were used to steer the rafts. In addition, some rafts carried “top loads” of carefully selected oak timbers for shipbuilders, stone slabs for Philadelphia sidewalks and charcoal, whisky, or butter produced by Delaware and Sullivan county farms.

At first, the rafts began their voyage in the main river below Hancock, but as demand for Catskill timber increased, rafts were constructed up the East and West branches of the Delaware as far north as Margaretville. As the industry progressed, water-driven sawmills were built on the banks of some of the main stream eddies. Logs were brought to the mill, sawed into planks and repackaged for rafting.

The rafting / logging industry lasted for 150 years.

Cutting timber, skidding logs and building rafts was winter work. When all these preparations were completed, the rafts were floated down river during high water, generally at the time of the early spring freshet. At night, the rafts were tied up along the banks or in a quiet eddy.

At some eddies, such as the Big Eddy at Narrowsburg, inns and taverns catered to the raftsmen. During the heyday of rafting, as many as a 1,000 men could be in Narrowsburg. Many rafts were sold before they reached tidewaters at Trenton, NJ, and this enabled Easton, PA to become the greatest log market on the river.

For those men who made the entire run, it was a long trip back to Narrowsburg and their homes farther upstream. After the railroads came, the raftsmen could take the train to Jersey City and then up the Hudson River to Newburgh and walk from there. Some took the direct route and simply walked home.

Timbering reached its peak in 1875; that spring, more than 3,000 raftsmen came down the river. But the industry declined rapidly afterwards because the virgin forests of the Upper Delaware were depleted. The lumber industry faded along with the settlements, which lumbering had supported.

In 1907, only four rafts came down. In 1922, the last raft came down the river from Hancock to Callicoon, but never left the upper river.

For more about the stories and songs of the raftsmen, go to https://riverreporter.com/stories/whistle-while-you-work,33568.

This article borrows heavily from the Sullivan County Historical Society’s article on Daniel Skinner at http://www.scnyhistory.org/index.php/awards-sp-798223613/history-makers/326-daniel-skinner.