A new essay collection published by Purple Mountain Press highlights an unexpected connection between the Catskills and one of literature’s most enduring characters: Peter Pan.
“Peter Pan in the Catskills and Other Historical Essays,” released last month, gathers 33 essays first published in Catskill Tri-County Historical Views, a journal of the Gilboa Museum and Juried History Center. The collection explores the region’s history through subjects ranging from railroads and baseball to folklore, conservation, and the arts.
The title comes from an essay by Elisabeth Henry about actress and stage designer Maude Adams, who lived at Onteora Park in Tannersville in the early 1900s and for whom the Maude Adams Theater Hub in Hunter is named. Adams, known as the first actor to play Peter Pan on stage, helped develop the character’s flying apparatus while living in Tannersville and performed the role more than 1,000 times.
As for the collection’s title, editor Bill Birns said the name reflects the region’s sense of wonder.
“Peter Pan is magical and how many times do we hear about the magic in the mountains?” he said.
Birns, 77, of Fleischmanns, has lived in the Catskills for 50 years. He edited the volume, wrote the introduction, holds a Ph.D. in rhetoric and linguistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and taught at Margaretville Central School and Onteora High School before retiring in 2007.
“I think that’s one of the great things about this book,” Birns said. “It’s a book that offers historical interpretations and each of the authors presents his or her historical interpretation of the thing that they’re looking at.”
The collection brings together 28 writers examining the Catskills through fossils, flora and fauna, art, railroads, Rip Van Winkle, and baseball.
Birns also wrote “A Catskill Catalog,” a Purple Mountain Press collection of more than 80 essays about Catskill history and its people that were first published as a column in The Catskill Mountain News.
“I could make the case that pretty much everything in America was born in the Catskills—not always accurate, but I could make a case,” he said.
Birns said the collection reflects the region’s broad appeal and includes four of his own essays.
He said the Catskills have long drawn visitors seeking restoration, a pattern he traced to the Civil War era.
“In that period afterwards, people were looking to the mountains to be restorative spiritually in that grief-stricken world,” he said. “A setting in the woods that could feed grief.”
The book opens with an essay by the late Vernon Benjamin, the Saugerties town historian whom Birns said “wrote the gold standard” for Hudson Valley history in his two-volume “The History of the Hudson River Valley.” Benjamin is honored in the book’s dedication alongside Nicholas Juried, a philanthropist who supported Catskill Tri-County Historical Views, and others.
Other essays explore figures and events across the region. One recounts the story of Max Shinburn, a bank robber active from the 1860s into the early 1900s. Another, by Michael Kudish, traces the destruction of hemlock forests during the tanning era, which led to the eventual creation of the Catskill Forest Preserve.
Birns also highlighted an essay by John Duda about the Delaware & Northern Railroad, a short-lived rail line that lasted about 30 years. Another essay, by Ed Nichols, recounts the arrival of electricity at his family farm in western Delaware County in the early 1940s.
“We’re documenting our sources to make it clear to ourselves as well as to the reader that we’re dealing in documented fact,” Birns said.
The book is the first original title issued by Purple Mountain Press since new owners Brett Barry, Rebecca Rego Barry, Carolyn Bennett, and Lee Hudson took over in January 2025. The new ownership plans to reissue classic titles while also publishing new works focused on New York state history, culture, and landscapes.
Upcoming events include a talk with Birns and Leslie Sharpe hosted by The Golden Notebook at the Woodstock Library at 4:30 p.m. May 9; a tabling and author signing with Birns at the Fleischmanns Memorial Day Street Fair on May 23; and a conversation between Birns and Elisabeth Henry at the Mountaintop Library in Tannersville at 11 a.m. June 6.
Mia Quick is an editorial assistant at The Overlook. Send correspondence to mia@theoverlooknews.com.