Failed Attempt to Raft the Neversink

Otto William Van Tuyl arrived in Bridgeville in 1811, built a home and store on the east bank, and operated at least one saw mill. He descended from an old line of Dutchmen in America, beginning with Jan Otto Van Tuyl, who departed Amsterdam in rather a hurry in 1663; he crossed the Atlantic to escape a murder conviction stemming from a bar fight. Two of Jan’s sons became pirates in the Indian Ocean, earning profit and adventure on the high seas. Another son, Abraham, worked as a shipright in Manhattan before he settled to farm on Staten Island’s north shore and ran a ferry service across New York Bay. Perhaps Otto W. Van Tuyl thought himself a mariner like his predecessors, because in 1816 he formed the Neversink Navigation Company with a goal of rafting the Neversink River. He convinced the state legislature in 1828 to loan him $10,000 to blast rocks and lay aprons to ease passage over the falls and sticky spots, but kept most of it for himself. First one and then a second trial raft sent down in 1829 and 1830 wrecked on rocks deep in the gorge. No effort was made after that to sail the Neversink.

Rafting Lumber Was a Profitable Venture

Since 1764 when Daniel Skinner lashed groups of logs together and rafted them down the Delaware River, it was clear that rafting logs and cut timber to city markets could be immensely profitable for everyone involved. But the Neversink had never been considered navigable, so its lumber was either carted at great expense over Wurtsboro Mountain or used locally.

The State Declared the Neversink River a Public Highway

In 1811, Otto William Van Tuyl moved to Bridgeville from New York City. He built a home on the east side of the bridge and ran a general store there. He also had at least one sawmill and owned much of the forested property in the gorge, including what became the community of Hackledam at the end of Katrina Falls Road. In 1816 he formed the Neversink Navigation Company (NN Co.) and for a few years claimed to have spent his own money on blasting rock and laying aprons. Then in 1828 he convinced the state of New York to loan $10,000 to the project. Unfortunately, multiple sources suggest Van Tuyl spent all but $2,000 on personal expenses.

Van Tuyl proposed rafts of 16 feet wide by 60 feet long, though he hoped to achieve rafts of hundred feet in length and eight boards deep for the eight to twelve hour trip from Lockwood Mills in South Fallsburgh to the Delaware River, a distance of 34 miles. He must have believed in his plan because he placed numerous advertisements during April and May of 1829 for his lumber products via the new Neversink route:

To Builders, Dock Builders, &c —The subscriber will contract to deliver at the city of New York, or at any place on the Hudson River between Kingston and the said city, any quantity of white pine, or hemlock lumber, hewed or sawed, to any size per bill. He can also furnish a considerable quantity of the following kinds of timber—viz:

White ash, chestnut, beech, birch, maple, cherry, oak, yellow pine & white wood or poplar; also any quantity of dock logs, white pine & hemlock logs for piles or pumps, spruce or white pine masts under four feet diameter and not over 75 feet long. Any contract made will be furnished by the time agreed on, and generally a great part in one month after receiving the bill. Apply to

OTTO WM. VAN TUYL, Bridgeville, SULLIVAN COUNTY, N.Y. (Address letters to Monticello, instead of Bridgeville, being the nearest Post Office.)

N.B. I will also agree to deliver any of the above at Philadelphia, or any an place on the Delaware River, below the mouth of the Neversink River. The masts by this conveyance can be taken of a greater length.

O.W. VAN TUYL

Wrecked at Denton Falls

In spring of 1829 the Neversink Navigation Company launched the first of two test rafts from Lockwood Mills in Fallsburgh, en route to the Delaware River. That raft, with Squires M. Hoyt of Tannersdale aboard, broke apart at Denton Falls; the next spring he sent a second raft with his sixteen-year-old son Otto William Jr. aboard. That raft too, broke apart at the “dive hole,” and two men were drowned. Young Otto survived, but Van Tuyl was a ruined man—much vilified in the Republican Watchman. He gradually sold off his Bridgeville holdings but continued his effort to tame the Neversink, using an 1833 survey of the river by DeWitt Clinton Junior to appeal for more money from the state.

If the river had complied, Van Tuyl might have made a fortune from tolls and the expanded market for the region’s lumber products. In the foreword to his survey of the river, engineer DeWitt Clinton Junior aided Van Tuyl's case in a forward to the Topographical Bureau:

“The banks of the Neversink river abound with much valuable timber, applicable for the various purposes of the shipbuilder, the carpenter the cabinet maker, and joiner Millwright and Carver. This lumber is every day becoming of more value in our seaports, but owing to the embarrassed state of the navigation of the never sink, but little is taken from that quarter.

…on most of our inland water courses are … raftsman Who buy exposure and risks, and, descending those streams with rafts, acquire a perfect knowledge of the channels and the proper pitch of water to run in and with their successes their enterprise has increased, and those bold and Hardy men have extended this branch of our inland navigation many thousands of miles along the beds of mountain streams, but there are still others which all their efforts cannot swim out, unless assisted by art, and such in fact, is the never sink river.”

Despite Clinton’s supporting documents outlining the tens of thousands of dollars to be made from tolls and the sale of lumber in Philadelphia and New York City, the state declined to invest further in the scheme.

Rafting the Delaware River: https://www.upperdelawarescenicbyway.org/history/logging-history/#:~:text=The%20timbers%20either%20became%20lodged,first%20successful%20trip%20in%201764.

Van Tuyl Family in America: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Van_Tuyl_Chronicle/qX4wEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=spotted+cow+%27van+tuyl&pg=PA88&printsec=frontcover

Clinton Jr., De Witt. Van Tuyl, William Otto. Report of De Witt Clinton, Esq., United States civil engineer : to the Topographical Bureau of the Department of War, on the survey, and examination of the Neversink River, from the falls at Thomas S. Lockwoods, to its junction with the Delaware River, at Carpenter's Point . 1833.

Quinlan, James Eldridge; Publication date 1873 Topics Geology, Delaware Indians Publisher Liberty, N.Y. : G.M. Beebe & W.T. Morgans Collection university_pittsburgh; americana Contributor University of Pittsburgh Library System Language English Eldridge. Antisell, Thomas. History of Sullivan county: embracing an account of its geology, climate, aborigines, early settlement, organization ; the formation of its towns with biographical sketches of prominent residents. Liberty, NY. G.M. Beebe & W.T. Morgans, 1873. (Introduction)

Advertisements placed by Otto Van Tuyl: New-York evening post., April 03, 1829, Page 1