Above: John Burroughs and Henry Ford pose for the cameras behind the wheel in 1913. Photo via the Research Library of the American Museum of Natural History's blog.
File under "opposites attract": The Catskills' most eminent nature writer, John Burroughs, was a longtime pal of Henry Ford, creator of the modern automobile.
Ford gave Burroughs his very own new-fangled automobile in 1913, and Burroughs, according to an article by Seth Putnam in a publication called My Ford Magazine, promptly ran it through a barn wall:
“In driving the car in the old barn, get rattled and let it run wild,” Burroughs wrote. “It bursts through the side of the barn like an explosion.” The car came to rest just before a 15-foot drop.
Putnam visited the Catskills last summer on the 100th anniversary of Ford's gift to Burroughs, and the resulting story is equal parts historical treatise and advertorial for the newest Ford plug-in hybrid:
As I pilot the Fusion Energi southwest through the winding roads around the Pepacton Reservoir in the heart of Delaware County, I can’t help but think that Henry Ford himself might have a difficult time finding simple spare parts today. A century later, there’s a massive amount of computer technology packed into the 10 square feet around me. My smartphone is paired to SYNC®, and the formerly silent cabin is filled with grungy blues music, broken only by turn-by-turn navigation from a pleasant female voice, which I asked for directions to the hotel where I’ll be staying in Andes, N.Y. Available adaptive cruise control is using the vehicle’s sensors to help keep me two car lengths from any traffic ahead. I know that if I did get too close, an alarm would beep-beep-beep at me, and a panel of red LEDs on the dashboard would light up the interior like a Roman candle. These are a couple of features, it seems, that could have come in handy for Burroughs and the back of his barn.
Putnam stopped to charge up his car at the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, which boasts the Catskills' first solar-powered electric car charging station and its own 2013 Ford hyrid car. He also interviewed local historian Bill Birns on the porch of Woodchuck Lodge, Burroughs' former home in Roxbury.
The organization that manages Woodchuck Lodge issued a press release about the Ford magazine article, and included a few more details about the friendship between Burroughs and Ford, including the fact that Ford owned Woodchuck Lodge after Burroughs died:
Ford visited Burroughs at Woodchuck Lodge several times, and even helped clear rocks from a pasture on the Burroughs family farm adjoining the Lodge. Burroughs named the field “The Ford Lot,” chiseling it on a roadside boulder which can still be seen today. Both men were farm-raised, and both were avid bird fanciers. With inventor Thomas Edison and rubber magnate Harvey Firestone, they were known as the Four Vagabonds, enjoying several highly publicized camping trips to sites around the East. One of those trips began in the apple orchard at Woodchuck Lodge. Ford attended Burroughs’ funeral in West Park, NY and his burial in Roxbury. He and wife Clara owned Woodchuck Lodge for more than 20 years following the naturalist’s death until the property returned to the family.
If the thought of Ford, Firestone, Edison and Burroughs going camping together blows your mind, check out this shot of all four of them perched atop a water wheel together on one such trip in 1918, sourced from a set of archival photos on The Henry Ford's Flickr page:
