South Gate
July 23, 2010 by admin
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 lay of the land was like then: mostly fields and the occasional wooded hill. There were certain areas that were never plowed and remained virgin forest. The family would sell some of the timber, but rather than allow loggers into the woods they towed the trees out themselves. Although the virgin forest is no longer there, one can still see century-old trees towering over South Gate.
Some of the buildings currently occupied by families and businesses on the north side of South Gate were originally part of the Hampton Farms infrastructure. The white barn where Jack’s Autobody now resides used to be used for storage. Apples were kept there using sawdust and ice (scraped from a nearby pond) up until they started using gas for preservation purposes. Later, the building housed a riding academy.
The Casperkill Creek, which flows through South Gate, was the southern boundary of the Hampton Farms property. Jim Warner remembers fishing in the stream as a child:
We had sunnies. They were little fish so if you caught about a hundred of them they would make a meal. They were little bitty fish. It also had suckers but you didn’t get those because they were always sucking on the bottom, you know, eating dirty stuff. They weren’t clean. I tried to hunt musk rats because the fur on those are worth something. I set traps and set traps, but never caught one. I’m glad I didn’t because I don’t know how I would have gotten it out of the trap. They fight.
Mr. Warner remembers that his family’s farm used to border other properties, including the White Head and Malady’s farms to the north and the Tilcon quarry – popularly referred to as “Stone Crusher” – to the west. Ed Lynch, another watershed resident, remembers what happened when the area began to be developed:
Of course, all those houses in South Gate were built long after the quarry started. And then these people are all up in arms when their china on the shelves rattles when they set off blasts every so often. I haven’t seen anything about it recently but there were times when there where uproars because maybe they were setting off bigger charges than they do today or maybe people got used to it. But then the thing was “Well, we were here first. This is what we do. And now you’re building next to us and complaining about vibration form our blasting?”
Another landmark in South Gate during the 1950’s was the famous chinchilla farm. Helmuth Bihn remembers what it was like:
His name was Chet Hogan. You walk up Sheafe Road, not too far, and there’s a road that comes out called Camelot Road. At that corner, he owned that whole corner there, and that’s where the chinchilla ranch was. He had a big old farmhouse there, which is all gone now, of course. I just saw some of the coops that he kept them in. I remember as a kid seeing some, but I never really got up close. I think he started off with only a couple of them, and they made more. I guess maybe the breed like rabbits, I don’t know, but I understand that the fur of the chinchilla is kind of rare and very expensive.
To read more about Jim Warner and Hampton Farms, see Jim Warner: from farming to computers