Dams for Towns; The Stagnation of Farming Culture around the Pepacton Reservoir

New York City\u27s water supply system is among the most extensive municipal water systems in the world. It serves over 8 million people daily and holds about 580 billion gallons (The City of New York 2010). The Pepacton Reservoir, built in 1955, is the largest reservoir in the system and supplies almost 25% of the total drinking water in New York City. During its construction, 943 people were forced to move from their homes in the towns of Arena, Pepacton, Shavertown, and Union Grove. These small, rural farming communities disappeared, reflecting a general trend within United States agriculture during the 1900s. The goal of this project is to represent spatially these changes in agricultural during the 1900s for Delaware County. The analysis is based on historical census data available from the U.S. Census Bureau in shapefile format and statistical, agricultural data from Delaware County and the U.S. Census of Agriculture, which is not yet georeferenced. Joins of nonspatial data from census to spatial data layers from the Seamless Server form a major component of the analysis, along with georeferencing maps available from Delaware County of the towns and farm