Ryan Somelofske

Ryan Somelofske artwork.

Ryan Somelofske

A Mountain Exists Until It’s Washed to Sea

Copper Piping, Image Transfer Print on Sailcloth

A Mountain Exists Until It’s Washed to Sea is a folk history of the New Jersey banks of Delaware Water Gap since invasion by the Dutch and English settlers in the early 17th century. The new inhabitants only saw Mount Tammany, the Kittanity Ridge and Delaware River as a means of resource extraction; whether that resource was copper, hydroelectricity or recreation.

For nearly three hundred years intermittent attempts at copper mining brought the same conclusion, there are only trace amounts of copper in the Kittatinny Ridge. After a series of devastating floods in the 1950’s, the Army Corps of Engineers had a new plan to extract wealth from the Gap, by building the largest hydroelectric dam east of the Mississippi. Local protests ended the construction of the dam, but the federal government had already expropriated much of the region and formed a National Recreation Area, the most recent attempt to extract wealth from the land.

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