a private company that incorporated in 1873 to upgrade and improve the existing wagon road. It eventually became today's Route 214. Geography The notch divides the Schoharie and Esopus subwatersheds of the Hudson River basin. The approach from the Schoharie to the north, where the two mountains can be seen from 214's junction with Route 23A, is characterized by a steady upward climb after the creek has been crossed, the two mountains seeming more and more immense until they just about swallow the road. Evers recommends coming this way when thunderstorms are brewing to the south if one wishes to understand attitudes such as Lanman's. "Lightning and thunder will be tossed back and forth from one mountain to the other," he writes. "And it will not be hard for a man with a normal amount of imagination to put himself in the place of his ancestors and see the Stony Clove transformed into the very gates of Hell." From the south, via Phoenicia, the approach up Stony Clove has less drama, since Hunter and Plateau are not visible until the notch is considerably closer. However, it offers much sylvan scenery, winding along Stony Clove Creek as it gradually gets higher and higher. Finally, at the Devil's Tombstone public campground it straightens out and the notch becomes apparent as it sweeps by Notch Pond and up to the height of land. Environment The notch is noteworthy as one of the few locations in the Catskills where boreal forest occurs below 3,000 feet (914 m) in elevation. Forest fires in 1893 which destroyed 3,000 acres (12 km2) around the notch, mostly on the Plateau side, and the steep terrain have left depleted, thin soils where balsam fir and red spruce can be seen along the west (Hunter) side of the road from the pond up into the notch. Scrubby paper birch, also common to boreal forests, is the dominant deciduous species on the Plateau side. Most of the lands around the notch are protected areas of the Catskill Park portion of New York's Forest Preserve. The Plateau lands are the western end of the Indian Head Wilderness Area; Hunter's are currently classified a step lower, as the Hunter Mountain Wild Forest, though a pending update to the Catskill State Land Master Plan would combine it with other properties to classify it, too, as wilderness. Recreation A medium-sized parking lot sits next to