What a Year: Check Out Our 10 Most-Read Stories

In the year since The Overlook launched, we’ve covered everything from real estate sales (and scams) to heartbreaking fires and the precarious economic state of what was once one of our liveliest towns. You, our readers, voted with your fingertips to create our most popular stories. Here they are!

10. Firefighter’s Death on Panther Mountain Rekindles Calls for Hiker Education in the Catskills (Dec. 19)

The death of Phoenicia volunteer firefighter Michael Ryan while attempting to rescue an injured hiker renewed calls from local officials and first responders for better education and outreach to visitors to the Catskills.

Ryan, 61, died from a heart attack while trying to reach a hiker with an ankle injury on Panther Mountain in Shandaken, home to one of the most visited trail sites in the Catskills. That popularity, officials say, has led to an influx of novice hikers who find themselves too often in situations where they need assistance.

“My frustration is with the fact that a 61-year-old man climbed up a steep slope to rescue this person because there was nobody else to do it,” said Lieutenant Alexander Klohe of the Olive Fire Department.

First responders conduct a rescue for a hiker on Panther Mountain in Shandaken on Dec. 13. Photo courtesy of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

9. Former Grossman Estate Listed for $4.99M (May 9)

The storied Bearsville estate that welcomed the likes of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Allen Ginsberg and Johnny Cash hit the market for a shade under $5 million.

The property, known locally as the Stone House on Striebel Road, is tucked away on more than 70 acres just outside the center of Woodstock in the hamlet of Bearsville. Built in 1914, the historic compound includes a main residence, multiple guesthouses, a greenhouse, pool, and writer’s cabin.

“It’s magic,” said listing agent Kathryn Johnson. “Yes, it’s got rock and roll history, but there’s also the pure magic of it.”

8. Stolen on Paper (April 25)

When Sawako Furuno and her husband, Mansur Khawar, arrived at their wooded lot on Raycliffe Drive on a quiet Sunday evening in April, they expected the same peaceful land they bought in 2019—untouched, overgrown and awaiting the dream home they planned to build.

Instead, several trees were missing and the land had been noticeably cleared.

To their shock, the couple learned that the lot had been fraudulently sold eight months earlier by impostors who posed as the rightful owners. According to Ulster County land records, someone used falsified documents and fake passports bearing the couple’s names to sell it.

The case underscores a widening pattern of real estate-related scams – especially those that involve vacant land.

7. Olive General Contractor Detained by ICE after Immigration Interview (Aug. 22)

Antonio Lopez, 52, a Boiceville contractor and landscaper, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a routine immigration interview in Albany.

Lopez, who was born in Mexico and has lived in the U.S. since the early 1990s, was taken into custody during a routine immigration meeting in Albany.

Lopez is among more than 30,000 people detained by the agency in July alone as the Trump Administration ramps up its attempts to deport what it calls illegal immigrants. Among local detainees is Gerson Turcios, a Honduran immigrant and Rhinebeck High School graduate who had been working as a landscaper.

6. Amanda Palmer Returns to Woodstock to Mine Her Soul (Aug. 29)

Anyone who has seen Amanda Palmer on stage knows the force of her presence. She’s exacting, fearless, unafraid to mine the depths of her soul and bleed in public. At 49, she did just that in Woodstock, where she rolled out a new batch of new songs that cut directly into the marrow of heartbreak, motherhood and survival.

Palmer built her career on collapsing the space between artist and audience, and in Woodstock she leaned on that community again—translating private upheaval into public song.

“Do I have lipstick on my nose?” she asked the audience between songs. “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”

5. Fire Destroys Tinker Street Building in Woodstock (Feb. 1)

A fire destroyed a multi-unit building on Tinker Street in Woodstock but didn’t cause injuries or deaths.

The fire broke out at 117 Tinker St., with the first call coming into the Woodstock Fire Department at 9:44 p.m. Saturday. Residents escaped safely, though two cats remain missing. Firefighters arriving on the scene found the top floor engulfed in flames.

Firefighters were called back to the scene around 2 a.m. Sunday after a “rekindle” ignited in two areas of the building, said Woodstock Fire Department First Assistant Chief Kevin Peters. Crews remained on site until about 9 a.m. as temperatures dropped as low as 4 degrees.

Firefighters respond to a late-night blaze at a multi-unit building on Tinker Street in Woodstock on Saturday. Roy Gumpel/The Overlook.

4. Hurley Officials Receive Threats After YouTube “Audit” Confrontation at Town Hall (Jan. 16)

Town of Hurley officials received dozens of angry emails and phone calls, some threatening violence and calling for their removal from the country, after a self-proclaimed “First Amendment auditor” posted a YouTube video of a confrontation with town officials and law enforcement at the town offices.

The incident is one of hundreds that have occurred in public spaces across the country over the past decade, prompting court cases and debate over whether those confronting public officials are citizen journalists seeking to uphold the Constitution, or opportunists aiming to provoke reactions that generate viral videos—and revenue.

Dan Warmus, a 43-year-old from the Buffalo area who operates the “Auditing Erie County” YouTube channel, entered Hurley Town Hall on Jan. 8 with a handheld camera. In the video, Deputy Town Clerk Jeffrey Mann asked Warmus why he was filming. Warmus responded that he “is investigating the town.” When Mann pressed him on what, and for whom, Warmus said he could not say because it was “an ongoing investigation.”

3. Bearsville Center Is Up for Sale for $7.9 Million (Jan. 16)

Bearsville Center, the historic Woodstock property that includes the Bearsville Theater, Utopia Studios Bearsville and several other businesses, is up for sale, according to the listing agent.

The asking price is $7,995,000, said Thomas Collins, managing director of SVN/Deegan-Collins Commercial Realty in Kingston. He said he’s confident that the property, owned by Woodstock entrepreneur Lizzie Vann, will find a buyer.

“It’s clearly a prized asset,” Collins said. “It’s an iconic property.”

The Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, a longtime music venue and part of the Bearsville Center complex, has been listed for sale as part of the property. Photo by Michael Sofronski for The Overlook.

2. A Death by a Thousand Cuts in Phoenicia (Feb. 6)

In February 2011, Phoenicia looked like a town on the rise.

The tiny Shandaken hamlet had just been named America’s “sixth-coolest small town” by Budget Travel magazine. Its half-mile Main Street, a two-lane strip of restaurants, shops and music venues tucked beneath Tremper Mountain, buzzed with weekend visitors and locals alike. After springtime tubing in the Esopus Creek, which ran just yards from downtown, people lingered for dinner, live music at the Phoenicia Hotel, or a slow walk past storefronts glowing late into the night.

Fifteen years later, the picture has changed.

More than half its residents live below. Phoenicia Elementary School closed in 2024 after 60 years as enrollment shriveled. Storefronts that were once mainstays are now vacant or gone. On sidewalks, many in disrepair, a wave of pedestrians has slowed to a trickle.

Storefronts line Main Street in Phoenicia, N.Y., where foot traffic has slowed in recent years following repeated flooding and the loss of several longtime businesses. Roy Gumpel/The Overlook.

1. Bob Dylan Might Be His Father. His Mother Is the Story. (Sept. 5)

When Sam Sussman stood in the doorway of his mother’s farmhouse in upstate New York one summer evening, nothing could have prepared him for what she had concealed. A blue dress hung from her gaunt shoulders. Her auburn hair was now fragile and gray. Just 24 hours earlier, she had told him she had cancer and asked him to come home.

Exactly eight years to the day after his mother, Fran Sussman, died in 2017 at 63, Sam Sussman, 34, prepared for a tour of his debut novel, “Boy From the North Country.” Told through Evan, his stand-in, the novel weaves two timelines: His mother’s bohemian New York years—acting classes, rehearsals, and a relationship with Bob Dylan as he shaped “Blood on the Tracks”—and the son’s adolescence in upstate Goshen, where grief, longing, late-night conversations with his dying mother, and resentment collided.

In one crucial scene, Evan presses his mother about Dylan and hears that their reconnection happened “the spring before you were born,” a revelation that reshapes his sense of self without resolving it.