The story
Gilboa was a farming and milling village on Schoharie Creek until New York City decided it needed the water. Between 1919 and 1926 the city built the Gilboa Dam and flooded the valley to create the Schoharie Reservoir, part of the vast upstate system that still supplies the city's taps. The old village was condemned, its roughly 350 residents removed, its buildings razed, and a new Gilboa rebuilt on higher ground to the north.
Digging the reservoir uncovered something far older than the town. Quarrymen cutting stone for the dam exposed fields of fossilized tree stumps rooted in Middle Devonian rock — the Gilboa Forest, about 385 million years old and the oldest fossil forest known on Earth. The fern-like trees, later named Wattieza, are the earliest true trees ever identified.
The village itself surfaces only in drought, when low water exposes foundations and old roads along the reservoir's edge. Some of the famous stumps are on display near the modern hamlet; the dam, the drowned grid, and the Devonian forest beneath it make Gilboa a rare place where two very different vanishings overlap.
What remains today
Submerged village foundations visible at low water, the Gilboa Dam and Schoharie Reservoir, and Devonian fossil tree stumps displayed near the modern hamlet.
Questions from the field
- What happened to old Gilboa, New York?
- It was condemned and flooded in the 1920s to build the Schoharie Reservoir for New York City's water supply; about 350 people were relocated and a new village was built north of the water.
- What is the Gilboa Fossil Forest?
- A bed of roughly 385-million-year-old fossilized tree stumps exposed during dam construction — the oldest known forest on Earth, whose trees (Wattieza) are the earliest true trees ever identified.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Gilboa — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
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Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
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Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 951100
- — NYC Department of Environmental Protection — Schoharie Reservoir
- — New York State Museum — Gilboa Fossil Forest