Tucked within Catskill Park and the Catskill Forest Preserve, the Town of Olive, NY, is home to the Ashokan Dam and the Ashokan Reservoir, a primary source of clean drinking water for New York City.

Olive was settled around 1740 and established from parts of the Towns of Hurley, Marbletown and Shandaken in 1823. Today, the 65-square-mile Town is comprised of the Boiceville, Olivebridge, Samsonville, Krumville, Shokan, West Shokan and Ashokan hamlets on the shorelines of the Reservoir.

Residents and visitors frequent the promenades around the Reservoir for walking, running and cycling; hikers access the Kanape Brook and High Point hiking trails from Watson Hollow Road in West Shokan; and fly fisherman have made the Esopus Creek that empties into the Reservoir one of the world’s most famous trout fishing streams for more than a century.

DID YOU KNOW?

The name for the Town of Olive was suggested by an early resident via Bible quote: “And Noah sent out a Dove from the Ark and when the waters subsided she returned with an Olive leaf in her mouth.”