By JAY BRAMAN JR.
Correspondent

More and more people from the outside world are learning what many in the region have known all along: This area is special.

Last year, Budget Travel magazine named Phoenicia one of the nation’s top 10 coolest small towns.

Before and after that award, media outlets frequently have given notice to the wonders of the Catskills, be it fly fishing, skiing, hiking, leaf peeping or any other virtue found in and around the mountains.

Now, The New York Times has published the findings of  10 of the newspaper’s  national correspondents, who were asked to identify their favorite roadways in America.

Guess which one ended up on the list. Route 28 of course.

Sam Shifton, the Times’ national editor, explained the project in last Friday’s edition.

“The bureau chiefs and national correspondents of The New York Times work from offices in 14 cities across the country, and report from all 50 states,” he wrote. “The work requires a great deal of driving. The reporters have bureau cars with extra rations packed into the trunks in case they have to stay where they are going for a while. They carry water bottles and spare batteries and extra notebooks and underwear, energy bars and a suit in case there’s a chance to meet a governor. They drive and they observe and they eat and they buy and they report. Then they drive again. These are some of their favorite stretches of road.”

Times correspondent Jesse McKinley wrote not just of the Route 28 that Freeman readers are familiar with, but the entire stretch, from Kingston all the way up to the Adirondacks.

Not only did McKinley point out that gems like Cooperstown are stops along the way, but he paid particular attention to one Delaware County establishment and one precious resource.

“One surprise is the Andes Hotel, which was founded in 1850 and still offers lodging and liquor, with modern-day drinkers happily occupying the hotel’s spacious front porch,” he wrote. Continued...

• 1
• 2
• 3
• See Full Story

And that resource?

“Route 28 traces much of its final stretches along Esopus Creek, a Hudson (River) tributary that is far more muscular than its name suggests,” McKinley wrote. “Like the route that follows it, it is both beautiful and powerful, an open secret known to locals and those willing to take the long way around.”

Other routes listed by the Times were:

• Route 26 in Oregon.

• Interstate 45 in Texas.

• The Enchanted Highway in North Dakota.

• Route 100 in Vermont.

• Highway 99 in the state of Washington.

• Route 1 in California.

• Highway 285 in Colorado. Continued...

• 1
• 2
• 3
• See Full Story

• Highway 441 in Georgia.

• Route 495 in New York.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• See Full Story

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• See Full Story

• Return to Paging Mode