On Saturday, September 21, 2002, a host of Sullivan County officials—and a few from outside the county, as well— celebrated the designation of the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway with speeches and presentations during stops at eleven strategic locations along the route.

The vision was that by certifying Route 97 from Port Jervis to Hancock as a Scenic Byway, it would introduce the rest of the country to a notion that locals have long known: that nature has bestowed an unrivaled magnificence upon the surrounding landscape.

Of course, those who know their Sullivan County history know that there is a certain appropriateness to the fact that the Byway was looked upon to establish a new chapter in the county's history, given the immense significance transportation has always played in that history.

In fact, it is a demonstrable fact that virtually every significant economic or historical milestone in Sullivan County's history has been the result of a major breakthrough in transportation.

This phenomenon can be traced back to before the actual formation of the county itself, to 1764 when Daniel Skinner, one of the earliest residents of the Upper Delaware, got the idea to transport logs down the river to Philadelphia, where they could be sold to the shipyards there. Thus was born the region's first great industry. Soon hundreds of men were rafting timber on the river, and a thousand rafts a year would leave the area for points to the south.

In 1801, entrepreneurs began construction of the Newburgh-Cochecton Turnpike, the first improved road through what would shortly become Sullivan County, and upon its completion a population boom would change the face of the region. In the first twenty years of the Turnpike's operation, the population of Sullivan County would double, from about 6,000 residents in 1810 to 12,000 in 1830.

The trend was continued when the D&H Canal began operation in 1828—again doubling the population of the county in its first twenty years to more than 25,000 in 1850—and when the railroads arrived later in the century. It was largely through the efforts of the three railroad companies serving the area that an unprecedented tourism boom ensued.

Then, in 1918, the Liberty Highway came into existence.

Much like the D&H Canal before it, the Liberty Highway was created without much thought given to Sullivan County—except for one of its most picturesque villages lending its name to the route, the county just happened to be in the way—but its economic impact on the region was considerable.

R.H. Johnston of the White Motorcar Company needed a way to get his vehicles from Cleveland, Ohio to New York City, and both of the most popular routes—the Lincoln Highway and the Mohawk Valley Route—were clogged with wartime traffic. So Johnston conceived the idea of the Liberty Highway, including State Route 4 in New York, which happened to pass right through the Sullivan County village of Liberty. Given the patriotic fervor of the time, Johnston thought the village's name seemed appropriate for the roadway itself. He became a one-man promotional campaign at first, writing articles for national magazines and hiring film crews to popularize the route, and his efforts were later supplemented by the Liberty Highway Association. Soon a number of other car manufacturers were utilizing the route to transport their vehicles to market, providing a great promotional tool. National attention was brought to the region because of the roadway, and what had become a moribund tourism economy again boomed.

There was hope among some savvy locals that something similar would unfold when they put together the plan for the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway. How could the inspiring natural beauty of the roadway and its environs fail to bring new nationwide acclaim to the region, they reasoned?

The Byway was voted the best scenic drive in the Northeast in 2015, and that year officials estimated that fall travelers accounted for an economic impact of more than $26 billion in New York State.

That's not just inspiring, it is big business, too.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. E-mail him at jconway52@hotmail.com.