The Poesten Kill: Waterfalls to Waterworks in the Capital District

By John Warren

The Poesten Kill has sustained Rensselaer County communities for generations. Native Americans first gained sustenance from the stream's waters and hunted and gathered on its shores. Its wild places, large waterfalls and natural springs served as
healthful inspiration to artists and adventurers. And during the nineteenth century, urban industrialists tapped its power to provide work opportunities for Irish, German, French and Italian immigrants. John Warren paints a vivid picture of the kill, highlighting the force and wonder that has stirred naturalists and entrepreneurs for centuries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781625842756

John Warren

USMC Captain John Warren is a former Marine infantry officer and successful entrepreneur. He is the cofounder and former CEO of Lima One Capital. He lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with his wife, Courtney, and three children.

Book preview

welcome.

INTRODUCTION

On the Hudson River along upstate New York’s eastern border, within the natural boundaries of river and mountains, lies the rough rectangle of Rensselaer County. It is literally cut in half by the Poesten Kill, a powerful stream that scours its way downhill from 1,600 feet high in the Petersburg Mountains to the sea-level flats of the Hudson River. The Poesten Kill splits the county across the middle into two pieces of roughly equal size, north and south. It tumbles off the mountains, meanders across a ten-mile-wide plateau and then falls abruptly through a series of steep gorges to settle into the Hudson River flood plain.

Although frequently hidden now behind modern development and historic ruins, the Poesten Kill’s geologic wonders are impressive. As it descends, the kill cuts through layers of rock, shale and silt and emerges from forested mountains, winds through rolling farmland, falls over steep cliffs and slides into the tidal Hudson. There are five major natural waterfalls on the Poesten Kill. They include Poesten Kill High Falls (Mount Ida Falls) in Troy, Barberville Falls east of Poestenkill Village and three falls in the town of Brunswick: the falls at Eagle Mills, Fred’s Falls in Cropseyville (on the Poesten Kill’s largest tributary, the Quacken Kill) and Buttermilk Falls. There have been dozens of places where the power of the Poesten Kill was captured by dams, raceways, water wheels and turbines, including a hydroelectric plant at the High Falls in Troy. In 1992, a small hydro plant was proposed at Barberville, but local opposition to the project, which would have despoiled the natural scenery of the Nature Conservancy–owned falls, ended it in its infancy.

Ruins of a mill at the top of Barberville Falls. The stones shown here were later rebuilt to provide a popular lookout for visitors to the falls, now owned by the Nature Conservancy. A small hydroelectric plant was proposed on the opposite bank in 1992. Courtesy Poestenkill Historical Society.

The waters of the Poesten Kill, with the addition of the substantial waters of the Quacken Kill, drain into the Hudson River in a relentless journey to the Atlantic at New York Harbor. Its cavernous gorges and spectacular falls have served as inspiration to generations of artists and nature lovers. Atop Mount Ida is the city of Troy’s Prospect Park, one of several natural areas protected by local governments and organizations, including Dyken Pond, Belden Pond and Barberville Falls. Nineteenth-century geologists once celebrated the Logan Fault, a thrust of older Cambrian rock that lies on top of newer Ordovician and runs from Canada to Alabama. It’s now called the Emmons Thrust after Ebenezer Emmons, who graduated in the first class at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).

The Poesten Kill has been home to American Indians who hunted, gathered, fished and farmed along its shores; frontier Dutch farmers and traders; colonial tradesmen, merchants, millers and lumbermen; and nineteenth-century iron, steel, textile and paper workers. Dutch, English, Irish, German, French and Italian immigrants, and others, have lived along its length. Its mouth at the Hudson was the first truly European frontier settlement beyond the walls of Fort Orange (what is now Albany). It was initially hoped that Greenbush would be the primary town for both sides of the Hudson, but the political reality of competing stakeholders (notably the Dutch West India Company and the Patroon Kiliaen van Rensselaer) made this impossible. One of the defining factors was that private settlers preferred citizenship at Beverwijck outside the gates of Fort Orange over the indentured servitude of the patroon’s feudal lands. So it was that Greenbush was settled before the Poesten Kill, but with its close association to Albany by ferry, it could hardly be described as frontier; the city of Rensselaer was once known as East Albany.

On the west side of the Hudson, flooding and terrain generally restricted the early development of farms and major industry. Four miles north of Fort Orange, the patroon established a farm once called de Vlackte (the Flatts), later known as West Troy and today Watervliet. The small community there was considerably closer to the fort than those on the Poesten Kill and much more connected to life there. To the north of the Poesten Kill, settlement was constrained where the Mohawk River meets the Hudson by enormous cliffs and the falls of Cohoes, which made river travel above Troy impossible. The Piscawan Kill lay to the north, but at its mouth was a Mohican community, so it was settled only later by Europeans. The Piscawan Kill provided plenty of room for Dutch bouweries (farms) and served most of the city’s water needs until about 1900, but it was not nearly powerful enough for major industry. Farther north, the Hoosac River held a substantial place in Native American and colonial history, but it was settled by Europeans much later than the Poesten Kill and faded in prominence during the latter part of the Industrial Revolution. The Wynants Kill, closer to the Poesten Kill, was settled at about the same time. Its short and ragged drop made it suitable for water power but not for farms and homes. Unlike its neighbor to the north, where the Wynants Kill enters the Hudson, there is only a small flood plain, not wide enough for substantial settlement. The banks of the Wynants Kill also found prominence during the Industrial Revolution but faded thereafter and have never served as an urban neighborhood, as the lower Poesten Kill has.

So the Poesten Kill was a frontier outpost that seemingly had it all: a large, flat, farmable flood plain and a potent source of water power, as well as room to grow. From the mouth of the Poesten Kill, Manhattan Island, the Atlantic seaboard, Lake Champlain, Montreal, the St. Lawrence River, the Mohawk River, the Great Lakes, the Hoosac River and New England were all within reach—even in prehistoric times. The markets at Albany, New York and later Troy in particular are crucial to understanding the development along the Poesten Kill.

The force of the water in the Poesten Kill helped drive the early development of Troy, once one of America’s most important nineteenth-century industrial cities. The Poesten Kill’s waters were harnessed for the American Industrial Revolution that built the golden age of American industry, trade and commerce; its banks afterward stood witness to industrial abandonment and urban decline. Mills established along the Poesten and Quacken Kills sent their goods—mostly grain, farm produce, wool, cotton and iron products, but also a variety of other consumer goods—to the markets at Troy and beyond. For instance, in the 1870s Poestenkill Village was home to saw- and gristmills, a cotton batten factory, a flax mill and a shirt factory. At the same time, mills along the Quacken Kill produced twine and carpet warp, paper, brush handles, cotton batten and carded and fulled wool, including cashmere, flannel and yarn. At Eagle Mills, there were saw- and gristmills, two iron foundries producing hoes and other farm tools and, nearby, three shirt factories.

At the head of Hudson River navigation, the mouth of the Poesten Kill was located at the eastern end of the Erie Canal and the southern end of the Champlain canal. It was also an important center of the very early Rensselaer & Saratoga and later Troy & Greenbush and New York Central Railroads. The Poesten Kill was home to the first paper factory in northern New York, and for many years Troy rivaled Pittsburgh in iron and steel production. What really made life along the Poesten Kill so unique, however, was the diversity of products made there. Unlike other eastern urban areas, the Poesten Kill was home to producers of agriculture and forest products along with feed, flour, paper, plaster, paint, textiles, iron and steel products like stoves, valves and wire—a substantial variety of consumer goods used along the kill and in the world beyond.

The bridge at Barberville just before the kill reaches the falls was the site of frequent destructive floods. This part of the Poesten Kill has changed little since 1800, but it no longer provides forest products for markets in Troy. Courtesy Poestenkill Historical Society.

THE LAY OF THE LAND

The Poesten Kill begins with springs and streams that feed Dyken Pond, twenty miles east of the Hudson in the Petersburg Mountains. The pond is located near the corner of the towns of Poestenkill, Grafton and Berlin and some seven miles from where New York, Vermont and Massachusetts come together. As late as the turn of the last century, this pond was still known as dyking pond, an indication of its long history. The modern dam enlarged the pond to the size of a small lake when it was built in 1902 by Manning Paper Company to regulate the water power and reduce the threat of flooding. The company donated the pond and some surrounding acres to Rensselaer County in 1973, and it is now home to the New York State Department of Conservation’s Dyken Pond Environmental Education Center.

From Dyken Pond the Poesten Kill gathers strength as it comes off the Petersburg Mountains. It tumbles south through the eastern end of the town of Berlin and then turns west through the hamlet of East Poestenkill (once called Columbia). Winding its way through the eastern part of the town of Poestenkill, it picks up water from a dozen smaller streams to create the rush that makes the ninety-two-foot drop at Barberville Falls and brings the kill to the broad swath of the Rensselaer Plateau. Here the first substantial village along its course, Poestenkill, was settled. Still some seven miles from the Hudson, the kill leaves Poestenkill Village and turns north-northwest, where it’s