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Brendan, if you drew a straight line on a map it might look like 100 miles, but Google Maps gives 138 miles by road to Midtown Manhattan.
The economy of Ulster County is a little strange. Much of the County is "Forever Wild" State park land, and tourism (even if it's only day/weekend trips from the NYC area) is a large share of the economy. COVID has made things even more weird: wealthy NYC-area residents (escapees?) have run up the real estate market and are residing in second homes. "Locals" can scarcely afford to live in the area any more. Towns with the hottest real estate markets now feel more like Brooklyn or the Upper West Side (Manhattan) than "upstate".

Thanks Geeker,

I've just been looking at some truly wonderful old pictures of barrel makers from the late 1800s, and I didn't realise, until now, that the famous Catskill Mountains were in Ulster County.

Brendan,
The highest of the "Catskill Mountains" (technically they are not mountains in the geological sense) are in Ulster Co., but parts are also in Sullivan (the old "Borscht Belt"), Delaware, Greene and Schoharie Cos.
An interesting historical subject is the New York City Reservoir System. To form the Catskill and Delaware Systems, massive blocks of land were seized by eminent domain and flooded.
Another is the "Hardenburgh [or "bergh"] Patent". In 1707, a Mr. Hardenburgh acquired 2 million acres of land, encompassing the Catskills, from an Indian tribe for 60 pounds. Probably a crooked deal.