Stephanie Blackman and Mark Loete moved their business from Manhattan to Chichester, N.Y., three years ago.
Delaware County is building an e-business center. Some officials say that larger scale economic development, like a proposed resort, is needed to jolt the economy, but that could have an adverse effect on New York City's water supply, fed from reservoirs like the Ashokan.
But the monument also serves as an unwelcome reminder that the population of this huge county - at 1,460 square miles nearly the size of Rhode Island - has not changed since Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
That kind of long-term stagnation is one reason James E. Eisel Sr., chairman of the Delaware County Board of Supervisors, is so upset by a state administrative law judge's recent decision to indefinitely hold up a proposed $250 million resort project - and all the jobs it may provide for the county's 48,000 residents - while additional environmental studies are done.
Much more is at stake here than the economy of a rural county framed by picture-book farms and verdant valleys. The county lies within New York City's upstate watershed, which provides water so clean that the city is exempt from federal laws requiring drinking water to be filtered, so long as its source is protected.
New York's plan to protect the watershed depends, in part, on keeping local communities on its side. And right now, Delhi (pronounced DELL-high) and other towns and hamlets do not see eye-to-eye with the city.
The pastoral peace is being disturbed by a complicated mix of economic worries and environmental concerns, of old-economy notions of job creation set against new-economy opportunities as yet untapped. At its heart, this latest dispute is another episode in the long-running upstate-downstate feud, but with a twist because some of the upstaters used to be downstaters.
There may be no harder place in New York than this to build a project as big as the one known as Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park. The principal developer, who is from the area, has proposed a world-class resort, about 125 miles from Manhattan, consisting of two luxury hotels, two championship golf courses, and hundreds of time-share apartments and single-family houses.
What makes getting building permits so tricky is that the resort would be built next to an existing state-owned ski slope within the watershed, and near state forest preserves that are constitutionally guaranteed to remain "forever wild."
An administrative law judge decided last week that after nearly two years of hearings and a 6,720-page environmental-impact statement, a dozen issues needed to be studied further. Among the areas the judge found lacking are how to deal with storm water runoff, preserve wilderness vistas and community character and assess the impact on wildlife.
"Impacts to wildlife, come on," Mr. Eisel said, expressing his frustration at the latest delay of a project he supports because he believes it will be an economic boon for Delaware County and the Catskill region. "I guess we've got to bring in deer and ask them what they think."
He and other local officials also fear that the latest delays could undermine the project altogether and send an unmistakable message that no sizable development in the watershed will ever be approved.
"If you can spend as many millions of dollars as these developers have spent and not even get halfway into the approval process, who's going to be the next to try it?" said Robert G. Cross Jr., supervisor of the town of Shandaken, in adjacent Ulster County, where part of the Belleayre project would be built.
Mr. Cross said the project had caused a schism in the area between those who want economic development and those who want to restrict growth.
Balancing local needs against those of New York City has led to a century of antagonism and resentment. But under federal pressure to cooperate or be forced to build a $9 billion filtration plant, New York signed an agreement in 1997 that formally recognized the watershed communities' need for economic development.
For their part, the local towns and villages agreed not to stand in the way of the city's attempts to protect the watershed by purchasing more land.
Belleayre is the biggest test of the agreement, and some local officials feel strongly that New York is abrogating its commitment by openly opposing the development.
New York officials say their first responsibility is to protect the water supply. They, and several environmental and outdoor groups, believe that the project, as proposed, would irreparably harm water quality.
Shandaken's town supervisor, Robert G. Cross Jr., facing camera, at the Phoenicia Diner with its owner, Christoforos Raptis, a transplanted New Yorker, and a waitress, Crystal Orthodoxou, from Long Island. They said they love the views of the mountains that surround them.
Hanging above this particular dispute is the possibility that federal officials would look unfavorably on a rift that threatened watershed protection when permission to avoid filtering comes up for renewal in 2007.
"The filtration-avoidance agreement is dependant on there being a working agreement between New York and the communities west of the Hudson," said Daniel A. Ruzow, a former state environmental official who is the lawyer for the Belleayre developer, Dean Gitter.
Mr. Ruzow said that although Mr. Gitter is extremely frustrated by the delays, he has no plans to withdraw from the project. He has decided to appeal the administrative law judge's decision.
While the procedural legal battles continue, a subtle change in the local economy continues apace. The region's economy traditionally has been based on tourism and the Catskills' distance from the congestion and pollution of the city. A small but growing number of people, most of them transplants from New York City, say distance is now irrelevant.
Using the Internet as their link to the city, photographers, graphic designers, Web designers, publicists, writers and real estate agents are finding ways to conduct their business in the mountains. Most of them oppose the Belleayre project, and prefer to see the area remain as it is. But they have brought change with them. So many are interested in living in the area that a local real estate company has just opened a branch office in TriBeCa, and Shandaken recently approved the construction of its first cellphone tower.
Three years ago, Stephanie Blackman and Mark Loete moved their graphic design and studio photography business from Manhattan to the mountains. They bought a rambling old duplex house in Chichester, a part of Shandaken that began as a furniture-making company town in the 19th century, and have retained nearly all their Manhattan clients.
Julie McQuain and her husband, John Carney, have been operating their public relations business out of what used to be their second home in Hardenburg, in Ulster County, since 1998. They helped form a business-support group called the Catskill E-Business Exchange to help other "wired professionals" make the transition to country life.
And in Delhi, the county itself is acknowledging the new economy by building an e-business incubator where entrepreneurs can rent offices with broadband Internet access as they expand their businesses.
Glenn Nealis, Delaware County's director of economic development, said that while Web-based entrepreneurs are important, they cannot provide the jobs the country needs, which will only come from big projects like the Belleayre resort.
But Ms. McQuain, who opposes the Belleayre project, says that such thinking shortchanges local residents.
"The people who are coming here from more-urban settings are bringing the technology up, but that is also the future for the younger generation of local families," she said. "They shouldn't aspire to making beds. They should aspire to the kind of higher-paying jobs that can be theirs."