Oh What A Lovely War: 132 Buildings In Historic Valley Slated To Be Destroyed

THE HISTORIC PETERS HOUSE WOULD BE SAVED AND REHABBED

The ghosts of the Tocks Island disaster of the early 1970s when hundreds of homes, barns, a church and other structures were destroyed to make way for a dam that was never built are about to write another sad chapter in the saga of the Minisink Valley with the resumption of destruction in the historic area straddling the scenic Delaware River in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The Tocks project was a lightning rod for the nascent American environmental movement. It destroyed the careers of some politicians and brought unexpected success to others. It was the cause of suicides, arson fires and violence in the Minisink. It exposed deep tears in the social fabric of the Poconos region of Pennsylvania, unleashing a deep bitterness against the Army Corps of Engineers and the dam's powerful, politically connected backers that seems just as intense today as it was three decades ago.

Tocks Island itself is a negligible spit of sand covered with oak, sycamore and scrub brush that sits midstream about six miles above Delaware Water Gap just out of the sight of motorists crossing the Interstate 80 toll bridge that links Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Under the Corps' plan, a reinforced concrete dam – by far the largest east of the Mississippi – would be built at the site, but the proposal was shelved in the 1930s because money to undertake such a huge project simply was not available during those lean times.

The plan was dusted off after hurricanes Connie and Diane ravaged the region in August 1955, dumping 20 inches of rain in less than a week. Some 78 people died in the Poconos, most of them from flood surges that turned babbling brooks into raging torrents. Tocks advocates argued that such disasters would be avoided in the future if a dam were built although the deadliest flooding from the twin storms was on tributaries and not the Delaware itself.

In 1962, Congress authorized the appropriation of $122 million to build a huge earth and rock-fill dam at Tocks, submerging the Minisink and creating a 37-mile-long, 140-foot deep lake extending nearly to Port Jervis, New York. Surrounding this monstrosity would be an 80-square-mile park to be called Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

The Army Corps of Engineers has a long and checkered history as the custodian of America’s rivers, harbors and wetlands. As was the case with Tocks, it often has been an intermediary between powerful political and private interests. As was the case with Tocks, it manipulated its own engineering and economic analyses to suit its needs. As was the case with Tocks, its tactics could be brutal.

It was bad enough that the Corps offered only pennies on the dollar for properties in the footprint of the Tocks reservoir. It also strong-armed resistant landowners with threats to bring in bulldozers if they didn't sell on the Corps' terms.

Although it would be years before the dam would be built, beginning in 1967 and continuing for five years a total of 206 families were forced out of their homes on both sides of the river, some who had lived there since the 1780s when the last Minsi Indians were forced out.

The plight of some of farmers -- left with fields to work but no farmhouses or barns – was particularly poignant. Two homeowners took their lives. Many others never recovered from the ordeal and went to early graves.

As the evictions accelerated, the Corps added insult to injury by placing "Houses for Rent" ads in the Village Voice and other New York City newspapers. Under pressure to cut costs, it calculated that revenue could be generated by renting out now-vacant properties until the dam was completed and the reservoir began filling up.

It calculated wrong. The ads were answered by flower children, artists, wannabe farmers and back-to-nature freaks. This ragtag band preferred to be called "river people," but many were squatters who saw an opportunity to freeload off of the feds. If the dam was a powder keg, the squatters would be the match that lit the fuse.

By 1969, the estimated cost of Tocks had nearly doubled to $214 million and the federal treasury was being drained by the Vietnam War. Two years later, tensions between locals and squatters escalated into violence as carloads of young men sped through the valley shooting out squatters' windows, setting fires to houses, barns and outbuildings, and killing pets and farm animals.

In 1973, a pro-dam federal judge ruled that the squatters were illegally occupying valley homes, but they refused to vacate. The standoff ended in February 1974 as federal marshals pounced on the squatters, including a woman who had given birth the night before the raids. Bulldozers quickly demolished the buildings, including several historic structures. The occupation was over, but for all intents and purposes so was the fight to build the dam because of an improbable ally -- President Richard Nixon.

On New Years Day 1970, four months before the first Earth Day, Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which required extensive studies on how federal projects like Tocks would affect their surroundings. Had the dam already been under construction, it would have been exempted.

Although the cracks in the Tocks project were multiplying, the Corps accelerated the razing of valley buildings and gutting of others, including historic Zion Lutheran Church. One house was destroyed by accident and the destruction finally was halted only after a local environmental group and the Sierra Club obtained a restraining order stopping further demolition.

The federal budget in 1970 contained no Tocks money for the first time since 1964, and in 1975 the Delaware River Basin Commission, with the Corps' reluctant acquiescence, voted to abandon Tocks.

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The latest chapter in the saga of the Minisink Valley has much to do with another unpopular war.

While the National Park Service has been underfunded for years, the strains on its operations, notably the upkeep of the natural and man-made attractions that it is charged with protecting, have been exacerbated by the enormous drain on the federal treasury of the misadventure in Iraq.

And so the park service, under the guise of streamlining operations and improving safety, is floating a plan to demolish 132 -- or nearly a quarter -- of the 550 remaining primary buildings in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

The 70,000-acre recreation area's budget for this year is a measly $9 million although it has numerous buildings, roads, bridges and dams, as well as 84 entrances that have to be monitored by park personnel, compared to two or three entrances at most other parks.

Park superintendent John Donahue says it would cost about $113 million to address the maintenance backlog, so the solution is to pick up where the Corps of Engineers left off.

The demolitions are scheduled for 2011, and the park service is finalizing plans for a new storage building that will house large objects of historic significance salvaged from the buildings on its hit list.

Donahue stresses that the park service will review that list with the state historic preservation offices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey before finalizing the structures to be razed, but that is a mere nicety since some historic structures already have deteriorated beyond repair because of neglect. Besides which, the recreation area is federal land, so the ghosts of Tocks and not locals and their governments once again will have the final say.

Photograph by Keith R. Stevenson/The Pocono Record