Danny Rosen, on the left, and E.J. "Gene" Gold on the right, stand just a little too close for comfort to the rushing foamy waters of the Sawkill at full flood, coming down from the Plaat Kill in early summer, 1953, in this rare vintage photo.

In 1738, Jan Wolfen was issued a grant deed to the land on Plaat Kill, which is now the area around the crossroad between Woodstock and Saugerties, where there was a small cemetery in which many members of the Wolfen family lie interred.

During the late spring and early summer, watershed runs down the Sawkill and makes the falls into a spectacular event. Painters adored the falls and it was once the most-often painted landscape feature in the area. Many artists even brought nude models to pose on the falls, until the J. Edgar Hoover/Joe McCarthy era in the mid-fifties, when it became illegal to be nude.