1003 Cold Brook Road

The Esopus Creek begins at Winnisook Lake on Slide Mountain and runs twenty-six miles in a clockwise arc, north to Big Indian and then east and southeast past Phoenicia, with Route 28 beside it for the last thirteen miles, until the valley opens at Boiceville and the gradient drops to under three percent. Then it enters the Ashokan Reservoir. Boiceville is the northwestern corner of that reservoir, where Route 28A crosses the creek, and the first right after the bridge is Cold Brook Road, running up the west bank.

A short walk upstream of the parcel the United States Geological Survey has kept a gauge on the creek at Coldbrook since October 1931. It reads 192 square miles of the Catskills draining past this point.

The Town of Olive carries the land as parcel 36.1-2-2.100, 54.40 deeded acres, and the neighbors on the map are the point. Along the parcel's western line is a 164.9-acre parcel owned by New York State and classed as Forest Preserve, land the state constitution has kept forever wild since 1894. Along its southern line is the City of New York's 8,042-acre reservoir parcel, held by the Department of Environmental Protection since the Ashokan was built between 1907 and 1915. The reservoir holds 122.9 billion gallons and, in a normal year, supplies about forty percent of the city's daily drinking water.

The railroad that served the reservoir's construction also explains the road. In June 1913 the Ulster and Delaware moved twelve miles of its line out of the way of the rising water and abandoned the alignment through the original Boiceville; the Cold Brook depot, just north of Route 28A beside the creek, became Boiceville's station until it closed in 1954. Ulster County bought the corridor in 1979, and in October 2019 the line east of Boiceville reopened as the Ashokan Rail Trail, eleven and a half miles of crushed stone to West Hurley. Its western trailhead is at the bottom of Cold Brook Road.

One story of wood frame and wood siding, 3,100 square feet, finished in 2026, with the heat in the slab. The great room is built around a stone fireplace that runs floor to ceiling, under wood ceilings and exposed beams, and French doors take it out to a bluestone patio inside a screened porch facing the mountains. The kitchen pairs a soapstone island with Carrara marble counters and backsplash, a farmhouse sink and a gas range, with a full scullery behind it for prep and storage.

Three bedrooms, each with its own bath, sit on the same level, the primary with a walk-in shower, a freestanding soaking tub and a floating double vanity in quartzite and brass. A detached two-car garage is heated and wired for an electric car, and the house runs on a well, an engineered septic system, underground utilities and a standby generator.

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