Jonathan Moldover received a BA degree from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, in 1970, followed by an MD degree from Columbia University in 1974. He moved to Northampton with his wife, Rebecca, in 2015, retiring from the practice of medicine in 2019. Planning to devote more time to photography, he began to look for topics for photo essays. He decided to focus on the changes in the Oxbow since Thomas Cole's famous painting, with a brief introductory essay. As he learned more, however, the text began to dominate the project, and he and his wife ended up working on an oral history project for the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts. The photo essay became this book.