Local Area

Deposit
The land between the two rivers now known as the Susquehanna and the Delaware, was first inhabited by Indians.  They named it Koo Koose, meaning “the place of owls”.  When the white man followed, he pronounced it “The Cook House”, and so it was named for many years.

In 1790, Captain Nathan Dean from Taunton, Massachusetts, lashed two canoes together, loaded his family and goods, and floated down the river to the Cook House.  He found an empty log house, and lived there until he could build another for his family.  He did this on a 200-acre lot, covering part of what is now Deposit, making him the first permanent settler.  On April 5, 1811, the village, consisting of twelve houses surrounded by 156 acres of land, was incorporated and given the name Deposit.

Lumber was the main industry in the area.  Logs were hauled by sleighs during the winter and deposited in great piles along the banks of the Delaware River, hence the name “Deposit”.  The lumber was then put on huge rafts and floated down the river to as far away as Philadelphia.

Those were prosperous times for Deposit.  The Erie Railroad, coming through in 1835, made it possible to transport milk and cheese to New York City from the many dairy farms.  The lumber industry created large mills and, later, paper and printing presses.

Around 1900, the only bank in Deposit went under, dragging with it the fortunes of private citizens and businesses.  Years later, the depression contributed further to the decline of Deposit, and the town never recovered.  Today, with a population of 1,936, only one of the printing press plants and one sawmill remain.  Other industry has settled in the area, and the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad is still going through the village, but conditions are far from what they once were.

For more information on Deposit, see http://www.depositchamber.com.

Sherman
Driving through the little town of Sherman on the way to Land of the Vikings, it is hard to imagine that it once was a busy center for several industries.

The woods and streams provided early settlers with food, mill power, and materials for their livelihoods, trades, and industries.  By 1870, the population of the village, then called New Baltimore, reached 300.  In 1885, there were two grocery stores, a millinery shop, a post office, a turning mill and cabinet shop, one sleigh and wagon repairing shop, two churches, one schoolhouse, one hotel, two chemical factories, a birch oil factory, several stone quarries, and “shoemakers too numerous to mention”.

One of the earliest, and maybe most important, industries was the stone quarries.  Eventually many blocks of New York City streets were paved with blue flagstone from the Sherman quarries.  Skilled stonemasons settled in the area and built, among other things, numerous stone arch bridges, many of which are still intact today, more than 100 years after their construction.

On July 13, 1889, a severe rainstorm flooded and devastated Sherman.  In two-and-a-half hours, more than six inches of rain fell.  Dams burst open and flooded the village with five feet of water.  Bridges were washed out, and lost manufactured goods were found all along the road to Hale Eddy.

After the flood disaster, many people moved away.  For those remaining, dairy farming became the main occupation.  And, like Deposit, Sherman never returned to its role as a busy industrial center.