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The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a large area in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York. They are located approximately north-northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, starting just west of the Hudson River. The Catskills occupy much or all of five counties (Delaware, Greene, Schoharie, Sullivan, and Ulster), with some areas falling into the boundaries of southwestern Albany, eastern Broome, northwestern Orange, and southern Otsego counties. Foothills are also found in southeastern Chenango, southern Montgomery, northern Otsego, and western Schenectady counties. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas close to or within the borders of the Catskill Park, a forest preserve protected from many forms of development under New York state law. Geologically, the Catskills are a mature dissected plateau, a once-flat region subsequently uplifted and eroded into sharp relief by watercourses. The Catskills form the northeastern end of, and highest-elevation portion of, the Allegheny Plateau (also known as the Appalachian Plateau).〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = U.S. Geological Survey )〕 Although the Catskills are sometimes compared with the Adirondack Mountains further north, the two mountain ranges are not geologically related, as the Adirondacks are a continuation of the Canadian Shield. Similarly, the Shawangunk Ridge, which forms the southeastern edge of the Catskills, is part of the geologically distinct Ridge-and-Valley province, and is a continuation of the same ridge known as Kittatinny Mountain in New Jersey and Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania. Climatically, the Catskills lie within the Allegheny Highlands forests ecoregion. The Catskills are well known in American culture, both as the setting for many 19th-century Hudson River School paintings and as the favored destination for urban vacationers from New York City in the mid-20th century. The region's many large resorts gave countless young stand-up comedians an opportunity to hone their craft. In addition, the Catskills have long been a haven for artists, musicians, and writers, especially in and around the towns of Phoeniciaand Woodstock, New York. ==Name== Nicolaes Visscher I's 1656 map of New Netherland located the ' at the mouth of Catskill creek. The region to the south is identified as ' (High Lands of the Esopus), a reference to a local band northern Lenape Native Americans who inhabited the banks of the Hudson and hunted in the highlands along the Esopus Creek. While the meaning of the name ("cat creek" in Dutch) and the namer (early Dutch explorers) are settled matters, exactly how and why the area is named "Catskills" is a mystery. Mountain lions (catamounts) were known to have been in the area when the Dutch arrived in the 17th century.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Elusive Mountain Lion – E-Files – Our History )〕 Theories: *The most common, and easiest, explanation is that bobcats were seen near Catskill creek and the present-day village of Catskill, and the name followed from there. However, there is no record of bobcats' ever having been seen in significant numbers on the banks of the Hudson, and the name Catskill does not appear on paper until 1655, more than four decades later. * A corruption of ', the Dutch sailors' term for the Indian stockades they saw on the riverbank. According to one Belgian authority, ' occurs in many place names throughout Flanders and has nothing to do with cats and everything to do with fortifications. * It was named for Dutch poet Jacob Cats, who was also known for his real estate prowess, profiting from speculation in lands reclaimed from the sea. * A ship named ''The Cat'' had gone up the Hudson shortly before the name was first used. In nautical slang of the era, ''cat'' could also mean a piece of equipment, or a particular type of small vessel, called a "catboat". * It has also been suggested that it refers to lacrosse, which Dutch visitors had seen the Iroquois natives play. ''Kat'' can also refer to a tennis racket, which a lacrosse stick resembles, and the first place the Dutch saw this, further down the river in the present-day Town of Saugerties, they gave the name ''Kaatsbaan'', for "tennis court", which is still on maps today. * The Mohicans roamed the woods of New England during the 18th century. A Mohican tribe supposedly inhabited the area known as the Catskills today, led by a Mohican chief named Cat. The confusion over the exact origins of the name led over the years to variant spellings such as ''Kaatskill'' and ''Kaaterskill'', both of which are also still used: the former in the regional magazine ''Kaatskill Life'', the latter as the name of a clove, creek, mountain, town, and waterfall. The supposed Indian name for the range, ''Onteora'' ("land in the sky"), was actually created by a white man in the mid-19th century to drum up business for a resort. It, too, persists today as the name of a school district and as the name of a Boy Scout summer camp (Onteora Scout Reservation). The name ''Catskills'' did not come into wide popular use for the mountains until the mid-19th century – in fact, that name was disparaged by purists as too plebeian, too reminiscent of the area's Dutch colonial past, especially since it was used by the local farming population. It may also have been a continuation of the British practice, after taking possession of the colony in the late 17th century, of trying to replace most Dutch Knickerbocker toponyms in present-day New York with their English alternatives. The locals preferred to call the range the ''Blue Mountains'', to harmonize with Vermont's Green Mountains and New Hampshire's White Mountains. It was only after Washington Irving's stories that Catskills won out over Blue Mountains and several other competitors. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Catskill Mountains」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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