For decades, environmentalists dreamed of acquiring and preserving for all time the vast, privately owned tracts of beguiling woodlands, rugged ridges, hiking trails and crystalline streams and lakes known as Sterling Forest, 40 miles northwest of New York City.
Starting in the 1920's, Frederick W.I. Lundy, a prominent New York City restaurateur, began buying up farms and woodlands in the rugged ridges between the Catskills and the Shawangunk Mountains, amassing a 5,405-acre 5,405-acre
Then at the end of last year, researchers found three of the brightly colored amphibians high in trees along the rugged ridges separating Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo.
The rugged ridges are separated by high-desert basins.
Adventure enthusiasts keen to kayak the rocky coastline, portage inland lakes and streams, and hike and camp throughout undeveloped wilderness arrive and quickly disappear into the rugged ridges and shorelines.
In the austere, suspenseful opening of "Comanche Station" (1960), the last of seven westerns starring Randolph Scott that Mr. Boetticher directed, a lone rider in a black hat appears on a rugged mountain ridge, descends to a sun-baked valley, pauses and looks back to see a mounted band of Indians armed with spears.
Opened in 1915 and paved with 15-ft concrete between 1917 and 1921, the road was the first paved highway directly linking the Los Angeles Basin with the San Joaquin Valley over the Tejon Pass and the rugged Sierra Pelona Mountains ridge south of Gorman.
He added that the tract sits at a juncture of the rugged, bald ridges of the Shawangunks, which are a haven for rock climbers, and the densely forested foothills of the Catskills, which draw thousands of campers every year.
Rugged bare-rock ridges of gneiss and huge granite boulders form a dramatic backdrop to the park's flora and fauna.
