Lackawack, New York
Lackawack was the largest of three communities inundated by Merriman Dam. It was home to a tannery, post office, blacksmith, school, churches, and Lackawack House, a hotel founded by Irish immigrant John Sheils in 1856. The hotel served as a summer meeting place for Tammany Hall politicians. Merriman Dam displaced 1200 residents in total between the towns of Lackawack, Montela, and Eureka. Lackawack residents were evacuated in 1938, fifteen years before the dam submerged the town.
About this community
- Dam
- Merriman Dam
- River
- Rondout Creek
- Established
- 1788
- Inundated
- 1938
- Population
- 400
Sources
- Diane Galusha, Liquid Assets: A History of New York City’s Water System, Expanded Edition (2016).
- James Eldridge Quinlan and Thomas Antisell, History of Sullivan County: Embracing an Account of Its Geology, Climate, Aborigines, Early Settlement, Organization ... with Biographical Sketches ... G. M. Beebe & W. T. Morgans (1873).
- Barbara Wakefield Purcell, Time and the Valley: Story of the Rondout and Neversink Valleys (1978).
- https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007074294.
- https://omeka.hrvh.org/exhibits/show/lost-hamlets-of-the-rondout/the-sheils-family-of-lackawack
- https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f4238c5d16544ffebde7b724020a70b0