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Housatonic River

The Housatonic River and its watershed are located primarily in the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts; only about 10% of its surface area is in New York. But if you’re from places like Austerlitz, Millerton, Amenia, Wassaic, Dover Plains, Wingdale, or Pauling...this is your watershed! Most of the runoff contributed by our state comes from Ten Mile Creek passing through the Harlem Valley it created. Eventually, the Housatonic will empty into Long Island Sound. 

What’s pictured here is the smaller but still intriguing Stone Church Brook. It’s named after a cavern created by the watercourse, whose opening on either end is shaped like a gothic arch; light filters in from an opening above. Here’s how one 19th-century writer described a feeling of timelessness inside the imagined Dover Stone Church: “The Great Preacher continues the same old service  within its shadowed recesses that was commenced ages ago, and which proceed with the same solemn stateliness whether men hear or forbear....Individuals, families, generations, and races come and go, — the Church and its solemn monotonies stand; and within its dark portals the same sweep of that awful and mysterious monody is still there. The Indian hushed, and heard it; the white frontiersman heard it; and it mingles just the same with silence, or with the shriek of the locomotive as it passes the door. There it will be when these have finished their work and passed away" (Smith 151-152).

From the Gazetteer: The Taghkanick Mts., extending along the E. border of [Duchess County], are 300 to 500 ft. above the valleys and 1000 to 1200 ft. above tide. Their declivities are generally steep, and in some places rocky.... The wide valley extending N. and s. through the co., separating the Taghkanick Mts. from The Highlands farther w., is drained by several streams. Ten Mile River flows s. in this valley through Amenia to near the s. line of Dover, where it turns E. and discharges its waters into the Housatonic River, in Conn. It receives Swamp River from the s....There is good evidence for the belief that the Schaghticoke tribe of Indians, a remnant of which is now living on the banks of the Housatonic River, in the town of Kent, Conn., once lived near the Ten Mile River, in Dover. Some forty years since, Indian graves were visible on the flat by the highway north of “Apple Sauce Hill,” which would make it appear to be the place where this tribe deposited their dead. They were mostly Pequods, who, after King Philips’s war, were driven by the Connecticut troops out of that State, and who took refuge from their pursuers in the thickets of an island, near the Swamp River in the town of Dover. (French 267; Smith 155). Major tributaries: Ten Mile River, Green River. Major lakes: Indian Lake, Swift/Crane Ponds. Highest point: Brace Mountain (2,323 ft). Area: 220 square miles within New York State.

Bash Bish.jpg

A popular attraction in the Berkshires was Bash Bish Falls, just over the state line in Massachusetts. Bryan writes that to represent the 200-foot series of falls "in completeness, would require more pages than we have space for in this volume" (32).

Clark W. Bryan, "Through the Housatonic Valley to the Hills and Homes of Berkshire" (1882)

By the 1880s railroads had become common enough that their uses weren’t confined to the hauling of freight or long-distance passengers; increasingly, they were a vehicle for tourism. The excerpt below comes from a promotional book created for the Housatonic Railroad. It invites readers to imagine themselves traveling from New York City into the picturesque (and cooler) mountains of Western Massachusetts and Connecticut. Bryan borrows elements of the nature writing genre to create an inviting travel prospectus: an experience of untouched beauty for vacationers.

Journey with us, then, indulgent reader, if you will, from New York, the fast becoming metropolis of the world, along the borders of Long Island Sound, over the well-appointed and admirably-conducted New York, New Haven Hartford railroad, to the beautiful and thrifty city of Bridgeport, down by the Sound, where it connects with the Housatonic railway, the latter of which reaches out its tracks of steel over, in, around and among low-lying hills and blooming valleys, far away to where the Housatonic river Winds its sometimes tumultuous and often tortuous course among “Rough quarries, rocks and hills, / Whose heads touch Heaven” from the thrifty land of wooden nutmegs, through almost the entire reach of Berkshire’s limits, to the quiet region where it finds its source so near the summit of rugged hilltops that from the places where emanate the bubbling springs which form the river's source, the mountain ranges and hills of the Green Mountain State bend low and make their obeisance to the blending beauty of the southern neighbors.

Of the Housatonic river, it is written by one who had canoed its whole length, from its laughing streamlets among the mountains to its open mouth down by the sea, in appreciative words like these: “A river is a poem...An epic is likely, however, to grow tiresome; a river, never….The Housatonic river, the finest of poems, is the chief ornament of Berkshire county, the finest of prose.”

And this noted and beautiful river, in dashing down among the mountains or winding its ways through widespread meadows, has many charming stretches where it washes first the feet of the bold mountainsides and then toys with the neatly-graveled roadbed of the Housatonic railway, grows weary in turning mill wheels and anon sleeps lazily in its meadowland bed, the while coquetting with the shadows which come to it from both its easterly and westerly banks. Along much of its way it is closely walled in by precipitous rocky-ribbed mountain sides, which seemingly have place there simply to prevent the stream from being contaminated by a connection with the outside world.

Asher B. Durand, Dover Plains, Dutchess County, New York (1845). We look down upon the lush valley formed by Ten Mile River, a New York tributary to the Housatonic. Although there are a few indirect signs of human habitation, the overall effect is unpopulated and pastoral. Forests blend pleasingly with grassy pastures; flocks of sheep and cattle can be seen grazing near plentiful water. In the foreground a group of three has climbed to a promontory. What are they doing? How would you describe the landscape they see? To learn more about Durand and see other works follow this link.

Works Consulted

—Bryan, Clark W. Through the Housatonic Hills to the Hills and Homes of Berkshire. Clark W. Bryan, 1882.

—French, J. H. Gazeteer of the State of New York. Ira J. Friedman, 1860.

—Smith, Philip Henry. General History of Duchess County, from 1609 to 1876, Inclusive. Pawling, NY: Published by the Author, 1877

—Spafford, Horatio Gates. A Gazetteer of the State of New York. H.C. Southwick, 1813.