Audio
Crum Elbow Creek
Transcript
There are two chapters in the history of this rugged landscape. The first begins where it always does – with nature.
Geologist Russell Urban-Meade tells the story of how this rugged landscape came to be…
RUSSELL URBAN-MEADE SOUND BITE: Well, a lot of people think that glaciers formed Hyde Park – and they didn’t. They are what I like to think of as the sandpaper. They came in long after the interesting geologic activity was long done. The Hudson Valley geology is a function of plate tectonic activity that was between 450 and 250 million years ago.
The tectonic activity compressed a lot of our rock formations up into their strange angles today, which is why you see rock outcrops that look like they are going straight up to the sky.
And the glaciers ground up the easy stuff, and sanded things off, but did not carve the Hudson Valley in any sense of the word.
A lot of the streams follow the ridges and the troughs that follow the compression of the tectonic activity. And so the direction that the Crum Elbow follows is really governed by that hard rock geology.
Glaciers advanced through the Hudson Valley more than one time and the most recent glacial advance melted off about 15-16 thousand years ago. Mastodons were alive through the period when we had glaciations in the Hudson Valley and so today every once and awhile we find semi-intact dead mastodons in ponds. And it’s very exciting and it indicates that the past was teeming with life, just as it is today.
NARRATOR: The second chapter of our landscape story begins as the first settlers arrived. Here is Carney Rhinevault, Hyde Park town historian, to continue the story …
SOUND BITE: CARNEY RHINEVAULT: Well; Hyde Park was settled by Jacobus Stoutenberg, His son in law, Richard D’Cotillion, started the first Hyde Park business – at Stoutenberg Landing – a shipping dock approximately where our train station is now. Local farmers would ship their products – hay, barley, oats, corn, milk, cheese, butter, apples, cider – down to NYC using the river docks. Some of the business at the waterfront – it was a very vibrant area – was shipping, milling, distilling, wholesale and retail mercantile, lumbering, tanning, shipbuilding, cooperage, and hotel enterprises right at the waterfront.
NARRATOR: Crum Elbow Creek and its streams provided water power that made millworks vital to Hyde Park commerce. Hyde Park native John Golden shares his personal recollections of the mills that grew along with the community…
SOUND BITE: JOHN GOLDEN Most of the commerce was developed along the CE Creek with the mills that was the beginning of the settlement of Hyde Park. You can see remnants - If you hiked up the creek, in different spots there’s an old mill wheel. The Cudner Mill – a sawmill; the Dickensons – grain mill – at Trout’s Mill they ground grain, too – The Carters was an edge tool mill, grinding steel...East of the village were all farms in those days, and they grew grain and brought it to the local mills along the creek. Each of the mills had a wagon road giving access to the mills.
NARRATOR: Today, there’s a new chapter being written to continue the history of Crum Elbow Creek. It’s a story of conservation and caretaking, told by a community dedicated to the preservation of the rich natural and cultural histories of Crum Elbow Creek, who respect the past as the foundation for the future.
Description
Crum Elbow Creek and its streams provided water power that made millworks vital to Hyde Park commerce.
Duration
3 minutes, 48 seconds
Credit
National Park Service
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