Feed on
Posts
comments

Archive for July, 2010

In its middle reaches the Casperkill flows through about a mile of forested rolling hills on the Casperkill Golf course.  The picture above shows what this stretch of land looked like prior to the construction of the golf course.  This image was taken from Joyce C. Ghee and Joan Spence’s Poughkeepsie 1898-1998: A Century of […]

Read Full Post »

Arial Shogren, a rising sophomore at Vassar College, holds up a piece of trash recovered from the Fonteynkill during a creek clean-up. Earlier this week I caught up with Arial Shogren.  Arial has been working with biology professor Margaret Ronsheim this summer studying ecological succession in the Edith Roberts Ecological Laboratory that borders the Fonteynkill. […]

Read Full Post »

South Gate

A rough outline of the Hampton Farms property in South Gate South Gate is one of several residential suburbs in the Town of Poughkeepsie. Now almost completely covered by housing developments, the area was once all farmland. Up until 1941 Jim Warner’s family owned an apple farm called Hampton Farms. He still remembers what the […]

Read Full Post »

Wooded Wetland

Wooded wetland between Bedell Road and the FICA landfill site. The land area in the upper portion of the Casperkill watershed is primarily wooded wetland—a forested area with water or wet soil found along the edge of a lake, river or stream—with limited residential and commercial development.  Wooded wetlands are important for a variety of […]

Read Full Post »

Anyone who has ever gone along Boardman Road will have seen the attractive “Cliffdale” estate. Also known as the Kenyon House, the estate is currently occupied by the Poughkeepsie Day School. The impressive 23-room house was built between 1909 and 1913 by the famous raincoat and tire manufacturer Clarence Kenyon. After his death, the property […]

Read Full Post »

Phyllis Davison Teasdale graduated from Vassar College in 1943 Phillys Teasdale is 87 years old. Having spent most of her life in the Casperkill watershed, Mrs. Teasdale has many fond memories of events and locations along the Creek.  Her son Chris grew up on Boardman Road, where he remembers playing in the big playground that […]

Read Full Post »

Hagan Farms

The original Hagan farm house still stands.  The unique architecture of the building distinguishes it from the other houses in the neighborhood. From the 1930s until the 1950s the area that is now the Spackenkill neighborhood, or Hagan Town, was the property of Hagan Farms. Jim Warner, who worked at Hagan Farms in the early […]

Read Full Post »

This house, now a law office, was the main farmhouse at Hampton Farms Jim Warner is 80 years old. He has lived his whole life in Poughkeepsie, so he remembers the transition from agriculture to industry that took place within the Casperkill watershed over the course of the 20th century. Mr. Warner himself was part […]

Read Full Post »

The Rochambeau Pond

Vinnie and Helmuth Bihn grew up on Rochambeau Road. Their parents owned a motel there, along with a pond created by damming the Casperkill. Although the dam is no longer functional and the pond has all but dried up, the Bihns still remember what it was like when the pond was deep enough to fish […]

Read Full Post »

On Saturday I joined the Ralph T. Waterman Bird Club on one of the five bird walks that they are leading for Dutchess Watershed Awareness Month.  The walk was at the Vassar Farm and Ecological Preserve, which is one of three places that the Club frequents in the Casperkill watershed (the other two locations are […]

Read Full Post »

Next »

Social Widgets powered by AB-WebLog.com.