The Catskills are famous for a great many firsts: America's first frontier; its first grand resort hotel; its first artists colony; its first school of art and literature; and its first American myth.

Because of its reputation as Number One, the northern Catskills has always attracted spry spirits and bold adventurers, many of them firsts in their own right.

One of those is Maude Adams, America's first Peter Pan.

First Lady of the American stage from 1872, when at nine months old she made her theatrical debut on a Salt Lake City stage, until her retirement in the late 1930s, so beloved was she by American audiences that it's said she nearly "broke [their] hearts" with joy every time she stepped in front of the footlights.

One of the nation's original super-stars, Adams was drawn to the Catskills early in her career. According to her biographer, Phyllis Robbins, the petite, winsome actress bought "a tract of woodlands" in the mountains and "built Caddam Hill." This was five years before she would create the character of Peter Pan for American theater-goers, a part that author J.M. Barrie had created for her even though Nina Boucicault was the first to breathe life into him on the British stage.

For Adams, Onteora Park, an exclusive summer residential colony of the Catskills nestled in the hilltops along Route 23C in Tannersville, Greene County, was a retreat from the world, a safe port in the Hollywood-like storm of the American stage. To her, the Catskills spelled magic. So it isn't surprising that in 1904, after receiving a letter from English playwright J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, to accept a role in his new play ("I should like you to be the boy and the girl and most of the children and the pirate captain," he wrote) she flew like a Lost Boy to her Never Land in the Catskills (second to the right and straight on till morning), where amidst the mountain's other fairies, elves and wee folk, Adams' Puckish Pan, a classic character rivaled only by Rip Van Winkle, was born to the American stage.

Ada Patterson, in her 1907 profile of Adams, quotes the actress as saying that she was considering the part of Rosalind in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" when her manager Charles Frohman handed her Barrie's play to read. "I had not finished the first act before the quaint character of 'Peter Pan' had charmed me," she told Patterson. "I could feel the presence of the Fairies and the Indians and the Pirates and the lost boys for Never-Never-Never Land, and in their midst the dashing, winsome 'Peter Pan.' When I had reached the last line of the play I had made my decision. I would play the character. When I saw Mr. Frohman again I said, 'You may shelve your Shakespearean plans for the present. I am going to play 'Peter Pan.'

Adams continued, "It was not until then that I recalled a remark which Mr. Barrie had made to me the year before. 'A character is in my mind that has come to me through you and I am going to make a play of it.' When he learned that we were going to produce his play he wrote, 'I want you to know that it was you that inspired the writing of the play.' So it was a kind of mental telepathy between Mr. Barrie and 'Peter Pan' and me all the while."

Like that other American original, Annie Oakley, Adams' long and distinguished career in the theater helped tear down important social barriers for women, while she herself staunchly denied any interest in women's rights. Asked her opinion of publicity by a newspaper reporter, she volunteered her attitude towards women's rights as well, "I don't see anyway, why an actress must give her personality to the world, though it seems to be expected, and those who curiously investigate her private life are not always careful how they use their information," she said.

Pausing for a moment, she decided to give the future a little glimpse of herself anyway. "I haven't very decided opinions on the great questions of the day, but there's one thing I don't believe in, and that is woman's rights. I think the men have taken pretty good care of us all these years, and I don't see what is the matter with letting them keep it up. Any woman half-way clever can make the men do just as she wants to have them, and at the same time keep them thinking they are having their own way - and what more would she have?"

This, from a woman who refused marriage, owned three homes in separate parts of the country, supported her mother and grandmother (her father died when she was seven), roamed the world in search of adventure, and was the twentieth century equivalent of a self-made millionaire.

Maude Adams died quietly at her Onteora home on July 17, 1953, mourned deeply by those who remembered her. Her home, a private residence, is closed to the public.

Which brings us to Ned Buntline...

When this feisty artist wasn't writing (or fighting or drinking or marrying -- he's said to have had seven wives, a few of them at the same time), Delaware County author Ned Buntline would sometimes give temperance lectures, but only after he'd braced himself with a few stiff drinks.

Born in Stamford Village, New York on March 20, 1821 as Edward Zane Carroll, Buntline -- a pen-name he would later come to be known by -- is another of those larger-than-life characters that the Catskills seems naturally to produce. Like his twin names, Buntline seemed to have had twin personalities: While Edward Carroll was capable of saving lives and capturing murderers, Ned Buntline was responsible for inciting riots, and murdering the husband of his mistress in a duel. Following in the footsteps of James Fenimore Cooper, Buntline led the way for two of America's notable writers, Jack London and Jack Kerouac. Unfortunately, unlike them, he still remains a forgotten "first."

Buntline is said to have nicknamed, then argued with, "Buffalo Bill" Cody over the profits of their Wild West theatrical presentation, Scouts of the Prairie. According to legend, Buntline wrote the show in four hours for his famous cowboy "pard." He also performed in it and was later panned by a New York Herald critic who loved Buffalo Bill but thought Ned a "maundering" imbecile. Eventually Buntline left Buffalo Bill's troupe (With reviews like that, no wonder!) and was replaced for a while by that other Western legend, Wild Bill Hickok.

In fact, Buntline had much to do with creating the legends that surrounded Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson and others. In his lifetime, 1821 to 1886, the frenetic dime novelist produced hundreds of novels and short stories of the Wild West, including King of the Border Men, the first novel ever written about Buffalo Bill and his daring exploits on the American Plains.

A short, ungainly man with a hunched back and distinctive red hair, Buntline was drawn to idealized images of himself. Because of this, he sought out characters who seemed to reveal to the world the bold spirit that was hidden inside his socially unacceptable body.

Buntline also wrote tales of the sea. So prolific was he that during his lifetime Buntline's stories of piracy and the Wild West could be found in most of the popular magazines of the day; even Mark Twain is said to have patterned some of his stories after the Buntline formula. According to a fellow author, Buntline "turned out fiction in a truly miraculous manner. He wrote anywhere, everywhere -- in hotel rooms, on trains, and at all hours when he could snatch time to push the pencil."

In the early 1870s, weary from age and adventure, the author who would later become known as "King of the Dime Novelists," retired to his birthplace in Stamford, Delaware County to a home he christened "The Eagle's Nest." It's here that he died on July 16, 1886 from heart disease. His home is still a private residence and is closed to the public.

Which brings us to Mary Mapes Dodge...

In 1888, Mary Mapes Dodge, author of the treasured children's classic, Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, bought a home in Onetora Park in Tannersville, Greene County, and named it "Yarrow," after the soft, aromatic wildflower with fern-like leaves and tight, white flower clusters that's so much a part of the mountains. As early as 1867, Dodge had visited the Catskills to seek rest for nervous exhaustion. She returned to the city feeling physically refreshed and bearing a memento from her trip -- a bit of untamed forest moss entwined about a cross -- and gave it to her friend and supporter, Robert Dale Owen. She returned, too, feeling creatively inspired, bringing with her the idea for a new book, A Few Friends and How They Amused Themselves (1868), about the elaborate party games of one group of sophisticated New Yorkers, and the effects of those games on them. Although Dodge would write and edit many more books, poems, and articles after 1868, she would ultimately be remembered for her beloved novel, Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, which had been published two years earlier in 1865.

Although Dodge never wrote directly about the Catskills, Hans Brinker shows her fascination with the Dutch character, a character whose influence spreads over much of the Hudson Valley, parts of the Catskills and most of New York State. Mrs. Dodge drew the inspiration for her classic work from the Scharff family of Newark, New Jersey, and from her interest in Dutch culture. Having devoured Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic in 1856, she also gobbled up the author's History of the United Netherlands when it appeared in 1864. Only a few years earlier, she'd come across an article in The Working Farmer entitled "Skating Hints for Beginners" and read it with obvious interest. From it she learned that "skates with runners" similar to those then in fashion on frozen rivers and lakes through the United States "probably originated in the Low Countries, since they were introduced into England from Holland..."

Her imagination began to smolder; all it took was a request from an interested editor to write a children's series for publication, to ignite the bonfire that would eventually become Hans Brinker. Still, she needed her neighbors, the Scharffs, who'd originally come from the Netherlands, to fuel her burning literary imagination.

Adriaan Scharff and his large extended family -- wife, children and grandchildren -- came from Amsterdam in 1845 to settle in Dodge's hometown of Newark, New Jersey. A dignified Dutch family with a direct line, on Mrs. Scharff's side, to Christiaan Brunings, one of Holland's great engineers, the Scharffs soon rose to prominence in Newark, then a small country town. There they lived on a twenty-one acre farm with a clear view of the nearby Passaic River. Safe and secure in their new home, the young Scharffs whiled away their leisure hours trying to catch turtles and frogs in summer and skating on the silvery frozen river in winter. It's here that they gained a local reputation as "real fancy skaters."

Something seems to have clicked in Dodge's mind as soon as she was asked for a series of children's stories for she began mixing Motley's history with the stories of Holland told to her earlier by the Scharff family and the article she'd read on skating. At this point, her imagination twisting and turning like a Rube Goldberg invention, she visited the elder Scharffs and asked them to recall for her every detail of their life in Holland. Grandfather and Grandmother Scharff, as they were now called, did one better: they provided Dodge with a true story that would become the plot for her most memorable book, for Hans Brinker is the story of a young boy's courage and the healing power of love. It's the story of young Hans and Gretel Brinker, good Hollanders, who stand ready to sacrifice their most prized possessions -- their hard-earned new skates--to restore their father to health and their mother to happiness.

Dodge was not only a best-selling author, but a powerful editor as well. As editor of the influential children's magazine, St. Nicholas, Dodge was friend, confidante and publisher of many famous nineteenth century authors; in fact, it was she that many of them first turned to when they wanted an informed opinion about their work. These writers included Rudyard Kipling, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Mark Twain. Even Catskills' naturalist John Burroughs was an occasional guest at "Yarrow".

In 1890, Mark Twain rented a cottage in Onteora for the summer, naming it "Balsam" after...you guessed it. Twain's cottage stood across from the "Bear and Fox Inn," offering ample opportunity for the Dodge and Clemens' families to visit each other throughout the season. Perhaps it was during this summer that Dodge's literary relationship with Twain was cemented, for a little while later he wrote for her a sequel to Tom and Huck and a strange little tale entitled "Tom Sawyer Abroad," about a professor and a balloon, which she complained "had no ending at all" but she published anyway.

That summer, Twain and his family became a familiar sight on the streets of Tannersville. However Twain was to spend only two seasons in Onteora, while Mary Maples Dodge continued to travel back and forth from New York City to the Catskills until her death on Aug. 21, 1905. On that day, after a long illness, the beloved children's author and editor died at her Onteora home. Shortly afterwards, her funeral was held in a picturesque stone church only miles from her country home. It was here, in one of her favorite settings, that she was memorialized by fans and friends alike, even as the earthly aroma of her beloved wildflower wafted through the church's open windows, a fitting tribute to her passing. Later, Dodge, the "Lady of the Silver Skates," was laid to rest in Evergreen Cemetery in Hillside, New Jersey, near her hometown of Newark, a cross of yarrow on the ground above her and a field stone from Onteora to mark her grave.

Which brings us, finally, to two new Catskills "firsts," Whitley Strieber and Thomas Locker....

The widely popular artist-illustrator Thomas Locker, who lives in Stuyvesant, New York and who sometimes makes his summer home in the soft lap of Twilight Park, represents a return to the dreamy romanticism of the Hudson River School of Art. In his 1991 book, Catskill Eagle, inspired by Herman Melville's description of that lordly bird in chapter ninety-six of his novel Moby Dick, Locker's illustrations are filled with gushing gorges and seemingly infinite vistas. This book is, for the mountain-dweller, like a homecoming. Locker's latest work, Calico and Tin Horns (text by Candace Christiansen/illustrations by Thomas Locker), returns to the Catskills for its theme, this time drawing upon the Anti-Rent War of the 1840's for its story and images.

As for Whitley Strieber, author of Wolfen, Communion, Transformation and a host of other entertaining and highly imaginative works, what -- I'm sure you're thinking -- is this master of science fiction and fantasy doing on my list? I find this Ulster County author's work fascinating, not in spite of but because of its sometimes-flirtation with UFO's and other supernatural phenomena. When you stop to consider strange lights in the sky and uncanny visitors from another time and place, can Washington Irving really be that far behind?