Mombaccus Mountain

Mombaccus Mountain is located in the Catskill Mountains of New York. To the south, it looms over the hamlet of Samsonville in the town of Olive. Together with Little Rocky and South Mountain, Mombaccus Mountain is part of a massif dominated by Ashokan High Point. Below its north slope is the Kanape Brook trail, an old wagon road that leads to a saddle between Mombaccus and Ashokan High Point. Big Rosy Bone Knob, a lesser summit, lies southwest of Mombaccus Mountain. According to historian DeWitt Davis, Mombaccus was "noted for huckleberries and bears" and bear traps were dug on its slopes.^[2]

Key Information

Mombaccus Mountain
Mombaccus Mountain Location of Mombaccus Mountain within New York Show map of New York Mombaccus Mountain Mombaccus Mountain (the United States) Show map of the United States
Highest point
Elevation	2,838 feet (865 m)
Coordinates	41°54′35″N 74°18′41″W / 41.90972°N 74.31139°W / 41.90972; -74.31139[1]
Geography
Location	Samsonville, New York, New York, U.S.
Topo map	USGS West Shokan
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The placename Mombaccus ("mask of Bacchus" in Greek), was given by Dutch settlers to the area now known as the town of Rochester. It was inspired by a carving of a face (likely the Algonkian bear god Maysingwey) found on a sycamore tree where Rochester Creek (formerly known as Mombaccus Creek) enters Rondout Creek Today, Mombaccus is used as the name of a hamlet within Rochester on County Route 3 and for a tributary of Rochester Creek.^[3] The name Mombaccus was not given to the mountain until much later. When the town of Olive was formed, the area south of Mombaccus was known as "Subbeatty Land" and old deeds for properties on its slopes still refer to it as "Subbeatty Mountain."^[4]

1. ^ "Mombaccus Mountain". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
2. ^ "Town of Olive" by DeWitt C. Davis, in Alphonsus T. Clearwater, History of Ulster County, New York (Kingston, NY: W.J. Van Deusen, 1903), p. 326.
3. ^ Robert S. Grumet, Manhattan to Minisink: American Indian Place Names of Greater New York and Vicinity, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press (2013), p. 96, Evan T. Pritchard, Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin Peoples in New York, San Francisco/Tulsa: Council Oak Books (2002), p. 254. Both available via Google Books.
4. ^ An example can be found in: Proceedings of the Commissioners of the Land Office for the Year 1919 (Albany: J.B. Lyon), p. 159, available on Google Books.

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