Fishkill Creek - History

History

The Iroquois tribes of the area called the stream Tioronda: "Little stream that flows into big water". Dutch settlers called it Vis Kill for the abundant fish in the stream. When control of the area passed to the English, it was Anglicized to Fishkill Creek' ("creek" being technically redundant, as kill is the Dutch word for creek).

In the late 17th century, two New York City merchants, Francis Rombout and Gulian Verplanck, bought 85,000 acres (34,000 ha), most of it in the creek's watershed, from the local Indians. Verplanck died before the transaction could be finished, and with his share divided among his heirs the land became known as the Rombout Patent. In 1709 his daughter Catharyna and her husband Roger Brett became the first European settlers in the Fishkill valley. She administered the subdivision and sale of the patent lands from her house, which still stands near downtown Beacon, the oldest continuously occupied house in Dutchess County. They also built the first mill on the creek in 1717.

The upper Fishkill was settled around the same time. Henry Beekman, after boundary disputes with the Rombout patentees were resolved in their favor, obtained a crown grant of his own in 1703 for the lands now in the towns of Beekman and Union Vale. In 1710 the first settlers put down roots. One of them, six years later, was Zacharias Flagler, ancestor of Henry Morrison Flagler.

During the Revolutionary War, the Fishkill south of the village of Fishkill was a key location for the Continental Army. Troops were on continuous alert should the British Army try to push up through the Highlands to the south and retake the Hudson Valley, a move that could have cut the colonies in half. At the junction of two major overland routes, it was also the site of a key supply depot, and a large encampment of soldiers was located on 70 acres (28 ha) on the south of the creek, about where the interchange of Interstate 84 and US 9 is located now. George Washington passed through the area frequently. In 2009 the graves of as many as 700 soldiers were discovered at the site.

As industrialization began in the 19th century, factories joined the mills in tapping the Fishkill for waterpower. They also discharged their wastes into the stream. In 1853 businessmen in Matteawan, now part of Beacon, dammed Whaley Lake to control water levels downstream, expanding the lake to its present size.

In the early 20th century the watershed was among the many considered by a state commission for an expansion of the New York City water supply system, which was being strained by the city's rapid growth. The commission postulated that a reservoir near Stormville could be built for a cost of $17.4 million ($450 million in contemporary dollars) and provide storage capacity of 52.7 billion US gallons (199,000,000 m3). The Fishkill had the advantage of being immediately to the north of the Croton River watershed in Putnam and Westchester counties already tapped by the city, so it would not be necessary to build a long aqueduct to bring water to the city from the new reservoir.

"ts waters can be secured more quickly than those of any other supply of equal amount" in the state, the commission wrote in its 1904 report. The city ultimately decided not to use the Fishkill and instead acquired the land to build Ashokan Reservoir on Esopus Creek in Ulster County, across the Hudson.

In the later 20th century, after the industrial use of the lower watershed had declined somewhat, the area saw explosive population growth. Former farmlands were redeveloped as residential subdivisions, and southeastern Dutchess County became an exurban area of New York City. This increased runoff and other discharges into the stream.