Photo: Bikeable, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
John Burroughs was born in 1837 on a farm in Roxbury, in the western Catskills. He worked as a teacher and later as a clerk in the Treasury Department in Washington, where he became friends with Walt Whitman.
His essays about birds and the outdoors made him one of the most popular writers in the country in the late 1800s.
West Park
In 1873 Burroughs bought land in West Park, in the town of Esopus on the Hudson’s west bank, and built a stone house he called Riverby. He grew grapes and wrote about farming.
In 1895 he built Slabsides, a simple cabin in the woods nearby, using rough bark-covered boards. Visitors came to see him there, including Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
His legacy
Burroughs died in 1921. Slabsides and the land around it are now the John Burroughs Nature Sanctuary, run by the John Burroughs Association. The cabin opens to visitors a few days a year, and trails are open year round.
His essays helped create a public interest in nature study and conservation that shaped the early environmental movement in the country.
