Platte Clove Preserve

Platte Clove is a clove, an old Dutch word for a rocky mountain cleft, and it is one of the most rugged in the Catskills. Plattekill Creek gathers on the high plateau above and then tumbles off the edge of the range through a narrow gorge, dropping fast over ledge after ledge on its way toward the Hudson Valley far below. The road that climbs the clove is famously steep and winding, closed in winter, and the creek beside it has carved a green, shadowed canyon of hemlock and cold, clear water.

The Catskill Center's preserve protects the very top of this system, 208 acres wrapped around the head of the clove. Because the land is steep and forested and has been shielded from development for decades, it feels genuinely wild, the kind of place where the loudest sound is falling water and the temperature drops noticeably as you step down into the gorge.

The star of the preserve is Plattekill Falls, reached by the Waterfall Trail, a roughly one-third-mile path that begins near the trailhead kiosk and drops steeply into the gorge to the base of the falls. It is short but genuinely rugged, a scramble down through rock and root, and the reward is a tall cascade spilling into a shaded pool ringed by ferns and dripping stone. Swimming is not allowed and the ledges are slick, so it is a place to look and photograph rather than climb around.

The gentler Nature Trail is a half-mile loop along the south side of Plattekill Creek. It gives easy creek views, a look at the top of the clove, and passes through the stone foundations and scattered ruins of a boarding house that stood here in the 1800s, back when city visitors came up to the mountains to escape the summer heat. A third path, the Overlook Trail, follows the creek west across a rebuilt king-post footbridge and climbs on toward distant Overlook Mountain for those who want a longer day.

It is that variety on a small footprint that guests remember: a big waterfall, a hand-built bridge, and a piece of vanished history, all within an easy walk of the same parking area.

The preserve exists because of a gift. In 1975 the Griswold family donated the land to the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development so that its flora, fauna, geology, and history would be protected for good. The Catskill Center, a nonprofit that has worked to safeguard the region since the 1960s, has kept it as a quiet wilderness preserve ever since, stationing seasonal stewards at the trailhead in the warm months to help visitors and protect the land.

The property also carries a small piece of American art history. Each summer the Center hosts painters and other artists at a modest red cabin on the preserve through its Artist in Residence program, continuing a tradition that reaches back nearly two centuries. In the 1800s Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School, and his fellow painters were drawn to the drama of the Catskill cloves and their falls. In 2018 the preserve became the eighteenth site on the Hudson River School Art Trail, marked as the spot where Asher B. Durand and others captured the clove on canvas, so today you can compare the living gorge with the paintings it inspired.

The preserve is open dawn to dusk and reached from the top of the Platte Clove near Elka Park, above the villages of Tannersville and Hunter. The trails start near an informational kiosk at the trailhead; from spring through fall a Catskill Steward is usually posted there on weekends and holidays to answer questions and help protect the site. Because upkeep and stewardship are funded by donations, visitors are asked to leave a suggested day-use donation.

Wear real hiking shoes for the Waterfall Trail, which is steep and can be slippery, and give the gorge the respect it deserves near the falls and the creek. There are no services at the trailhead, so bring water and take care of restrooms and supplies in Tannersville or Palenville first. Give yourself a couple of unhurried hours to walk down to the falls, loop the nature trail past the old ruins, and take in a piece of Catskills landscape that has moved travelers and artists alike for two hundred years.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.