The hamlet of Potter Hollow is located in a small sheltered valley in the Hudson River watershed, in the northern foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Ninteenth-century buildings, many now abandoned, line Potter Hollow Road. The surrounding hills are covered in a patchwork of open fields cleared by farmers between the 1780s and 1850s and forest that has regrown. 

Potter Hollow Creek is a continuously changing and critical component of the local landscape. Fed by several unnamed streams and countless ephemeral rills, the creek flows through Potter Hollow and into the so-called Catskill Creek at Cooksburg. The Catskill is a major tributary of the Hudson River Estuary that drains the northern part of the Catskill Mountains. Its watershed comprises almost 1000 miles of tributaries and is the third-largest contributor of water to the Hudson River.  

Underlying Potter Hollow and the entire Catskills region is a massive wedge of consolidated sandstones and shales deposited by a vast river system, the Catskill Delta, in the Devonian period, more than 360 million years ago. The Catskill Delta deposits were buried under newer sediments, then uplifted as a plateau when two landmasses collided in a mountain building event known as the Acadian orogeny. As the plateau slowly rose, streams cut channels into the overlying rock.

In the Pleistocene epoch, glaciers and glacial lakes deposited fine sand, silt, clay, and boulders over the bedrock. Over thousands of years, loamy soils formed in glacial mineral deposits. The structure, chemistry and biology of these irreplaceable soils forms the basis of today’s ecological communities. Thanks to its rich soils, much of Potter Hollow is considered prime farmland.

The riparian corridor along Potter Hollow Creek and the surrounding woodlands and fields are occupied by highly diverse biological communities. The forest of maple, oak, hickory, beech, ash, birch, locust, elm, hemlock, white pine, and other tree species serves as nesting ground for hawks, owls, eagles, and numerous songbirds, and home to black bears, bobcats, fishers, bats, and many small mammals. The open meadows are habitat for diverse plant life, including hay and pasture grasses, forbs such as goldenrod and aster, and a wide array of animals: butterflies, moths, dragonflies, bees, and other pollinating insects, frogs, reptiles, raptors, grassland birds, wild turkeys, small mammals, deer, foxes, and coyotes, as well as domesticated sheep, cattle, and horses.