There is something almost impossibly peaceful about Cannonsville Reservoir.
Standing at the overlook in Delaware County, New York, you see blue water stretching between forested hills, clouds reflected across its surface and mountains disappearing into the distance. On a sunny afternoon, with little more than the sound of water and wind around you, it is easy to simply think:
This is beautiful.
And it is.
But beauty and grief can occupy the same landscape.
The informational signs at the overlook explained Cannonsville Reservoir and its role in New York City’s water supply. They showed pieces of the valley’s history, but didn’t explain the human cost of creating the reservoir.
Because beneath and around this beautiful body of water is the history of communities that no longer exist.
Homes were taken. Farms disappeared. Businesses closed. Roads ended. Cemeteries were relocated.
And hundreds of people had to leave.
Before Cannonsville Reservoir
Long before tourists stopped at the overlook to photograph the water, people lived in the valley of the West Branch of the Delaware River.
Cannonsville was not simply a name attached to a reservoir. It was a community.
The Town of Tompkins’ own history describes a village that developed over generations, with churches, grocery, hardware and feed stores, a post office and a school. Nearby Granton had its own school, post office and creamery, surrounded by fertile farmland along the river.
There were families here. Farms passed through generations. Children went to school. People worked, worshipped, shopped, visited their neighbors and buried their dead here.
Cannonsville was joined along the West Branch by the communities of Beerston, Granton, Rock Rift and Rock Royal.
Then New York City needed more water.
Building Cannonsville Reservoir
As New York City’s population and demand for water grew, officials looked increasingly far outside the city for new sources.
Cannonsville eventually became the final reservoir constructed as part of New York City’s vast reservoir system. The West Branch of the Delaware River was dammed, and Cannonsville Reservoir was placed into service in 1964. Today, at full capacity, it can hold approximately 95.7 billion gallons of water.
Water collected here can enter the West Delaware Tunnel and travel 44 miles underground to Rondout Reservoir. From there, it enters the Delaware Aqueduct and continues toward New York City.
It is an extraordinary piece of infrastructure. But infrastructure doesn’t appear on empty land. Creating it required transforming an inhabited valley.
Local historical records describe 19,910 acres of Delaware County being consumed by the project. Ninety-four farms were eliminated. Five communities disappeared.
And 941 people were displaced.
Cannonsville, Beerston, Granton, Rock Rift and Rock Royal
Those five names are worth writing down.
Cannonsville.
Beerston.
Granton.
Rock Rift.
Rock Royal.
They can sound like geographical trivia now.
They weren’t. They were places people called home.
Historical accounts from the Town of Tompkins describe the news of the reservoir as devastating to residents whose homes and land had sometimes been held by their families for generations.
Properties were acquired for the reservoir and owners received compensation, although historical accounts record disputes over whether some owners received what their property was truly worth. The conflict played out largely through government proceedings and the courts rather than through the kind of mass public protest we might associate with such a project today.
Eventually, people left. Buildings were removed. Farms disappeared.
Roads that once connected communities ceased to serve the lives they had been built around.
Construction of Pepacton Reservoir displaced approximately 974 people and eliminated the communities of Arena, Pepacton, Shavertown and Union Grove. The Catskill Watershed Corporation records that 2,371 bodies were removed from cemeteries there for reinterment elsewhere.
And the valley was prepared to hold water.
Even the Dead Had to Leave
Perhaps the detail I find most difficult to shake is what happened to the cemeteries.
Creating the reservoir didn’t only require relocating the living. Graves had to be moved, too.
Historical records of the Cannonsville project document removals from multiple cemeteries, including Beers, Brewer, Cannonsville, Granton, Rock Rift, Rock Royal and Wakeman, along with unidentified remains associated with other burial grounds. Many of the removals occurred in 1963.
Families weren’t merely losing houses and acreage.
The physical landscape connecting generations of a family — the home, the farm, the road, the church, the cemetery — was being dismantled.
That changes the way I look at the water.
A Reservoir Built for a City 120 Miles Away
Cannonsville Reservoir sits approximately 120 miles northwest of New York City. Yet its primary purpose is helping supply that city with drinking water.
That geographical relationship is part of what makes the history so complicated.
Millions of people have benefited from the engineering of New York City’s water system. Reliable clean water is one of the foundations of a functioning city, and the reservoir continues to perform an enormously important public service.
But those benefits came with costs that were disproportionately borne somewhere else.
Here, in rural Upstate New York, the cost was measured in acres, farms, communities — and human lives profoundly disrupted by decisions made in service of a distant population.
Acknowledging that isn’t the same as arguing that New York City shouldn’t have clean drinking water.
It is simply refusing to pretend that the water arrived without sacrifice.
Cannonsville Wasn’t the Only One
And this is where the story becomes much bigger than Cannonsville.
Across the Catskills and Delaware watershed, other communities were lost as New York City’s water system expanded.
The creation of other reservoirs eliminated still more communities, including places associated with what became the Neversink and Rondout reservoirs.
Collectively, these reservoirs represent an extraordinary feat of engineering.
They also represent a profound reshaping of rural Upstate New York.
Both things can be true.
Looking at Cannonsville Differently
I don’t think learning this history makes Cannonsville Reservoir less beautiful. If anything, it makes the landscape more interesting. But it changes what the beauty means.
When I look across that enormous stretch of blue water now, I don’t only see mountains reflected in a reservoir.
I think about farmhouses. Schoolchildren. Creameries and post offices. Neighbors who knew one another. Roads leading home.
Families standing in cemeteries where generations of their relatives had been buried.
People being told that the place they knew would soon cease to exist.
And eventually, water.
There is something eerie about standing somewhere so peaceful and realizing how much human history has been obscured by the landscape in front of you.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy it.
Cannonsville Reservoir is beautiful.
People fish here, paddle here, photograph it, stop at its overlooks and listen to its water. Nearly sixty years after the reservoir filled, it has become a landscape with a life and history of its own.
But appreciating what exists today doesn’t require forgetting what existed yesterday.
Maybe the most respectful way to experience places like this is to hold both stories at once.
Look at the water. Enjoy the mountains. Listen to the waves. Take the photograph.
But remember the names:
Cannonsville. Beerston. Granton. Rock Rift. Rock Royal.
Before there was a reservoir here, there were communities.
And they deserve to remain part of the story.
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