Efforts to bring logs down from the inaccessible area between East Lake Road and Gulick led to the construction of a rail line in the bottom of Briggs Gully. In 1885, maximum deforestation and agricultural land use arrived in New York State, often on lands that would not support these practices. Since 1885, there has been a slow decline of farming in the watershed, accelerated by the Great Depression from 1929 to 1943 and a gradual re-establishment of the area’s forests.