| Quassaick Creek Quassaic Creek | |
|---|---|
 Creek along the Newburgh city-town line | |
 | |
| Etymology | Algonquian for "stony brook"[1] |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| State | New York |
| Counties | Orange,Ulster |
| Municipality | Town of Plattekill, Town of Newburgh, City of Newburgh, Town of New Windsor |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Source | E of Tuckers Corner |
| • coordinates | 41°39′45″N74°01′34″W / 41.66250°N 74.02611°W /41.66250; -74.02611 |
| • elevation | 680 ft (210 m) |
| Mouth | Hudson River |
• coordinates | 41°29′16″N74°00′26″W / 41.48778°N 74.00722°W /41.48778; -74.00722 |
• elevation | 0 ft (0 m) |
| Basin features | |
| Tributaries | |
| • right | Bushfield Creek |
Quassaick Creek (Quassaic Creek on federal maps;[2] also once known asChambers Creek[3]) is an 18.4-mile-long (29.6 km)[4]tributary of theHudson River inOrange andUlstercounties in theU.S. state ofNew York. It rises in the glacial ridges west of the river, near the boundary between thetowns ofPlattekill andMarlborough. From there it flows south into thetown of Newburgh and thenthe city, where it eventually forms part of the border between it and neighboringNew Windsor before emptying into the Hudson.
It was one of the earliest placessettled by Europeans in the vicinity of what is present-day Newburgh. Milling and other industries were drawn to its banks, and it isimpounded several times in its lower course, most significantly atChadwick Lake, the Town of Newburgh's localwater supply. The industrial development of the lower banks led to seriouspollution of the creek in the 20th century. In the wake of successful cleanup efforts, some local citizens and organizations have proposed a system of parks and trails along the lower creek.[5]
The creek rises on the western slope of the long glacial ridge known asMarlboro Mountain, a half-mile east of the small hamlet known as Tuckers Corners in the Ulster County town of Plattekill. From there it flows downward into the valley through a minimally developed series ofswamps and ponds, south but trending further to the west. Just south of thehamlet ofPlattekill, it reaches the Orange County line, then quickly jogs back due west into Ulster County, crossing under its first major road,NY 32, in the process. Then it resumes a southerly heading, paralleling Old Mill Road, theNew York State Thruway and Route 32 back into Orange County. Two miles (3.2 km) to the south, it opens up intoChadwick Lake, areservoir built in 1926 as a privately owned recreational lake, and purchased by the town of Newburgh in 1962 to serve as the town's main water supply. It is today a town park, with trails and aplayground at the southern end.
After the dam,NY 300 crosses and Quassaick Creek remains parallel what is now Route 300 as it continues south. Here the surrounding land grows more developed and primarily residential. Finally, just north of Newburgh's Town Hall, it crosses 300 again and turns to the east, paralleling Gardnertown Road for almost a mile to county-owned Algonquin Park. In the marshes at the southeastern corner, it receives Bushfield Creek, its largest and only named tributary, then crosses underNY 52 and into another impoundment, Winona Lake, which gives the suburban area and its local fire district their name.
From the lake's decayingspillway the creek goes underInterstate 84 to Brookside Pond, in an undeveloped area just outside the city of Newburgh. The outflow from here veers east and then forms the line between the city and town of Newburgh asNY 17K crosses. A short distance below this, it enters Harrison Pond and then veers east into the city, crossingNY 207 near its northern terminus. It parallels 17K through a slightly wooded corridor, then is impounded again to create Muchattoes Lake, the center of a housing project built during the city'surban renewal efforts in the early 1970s. It crosses under Route 32 again, then widens and becomes the boundary between the city and the town ofNew Windsor to its south. A short distance later, after crossing underUS 9W, a small valley opens up as it drops its last 100 feet (30 m) to reach the Hudson near atank farm.
In 1709, over 50German Palatines settled along the north side of the creek near the Hudson, with the encouragement ofQueen Anne. They were the first inhabitants of what later became Newburgh, and as a reward for making it productive, every man, woman and child among them was later granted 50 acres (20 ha) each by the British crown.[6] No trace of this settlement survives today.[7]
As the settlement grew into the city, and other towns were established nearby, both before and afterAmerican independence, the creek proved to be very useful first formillers and later to the developingfactories. Development continued far upstream. At today's Algonquin Park, a largegunpowder mill complex, claimed at the time to be the largest in the country, was built.[8] It is today recognized as theOrange Mill Historic District, and some of the stone buildings are still standing.
In 1879 a largesquatters' camp on the banks of the creek along the Newburgh-New Windsor divide caused some local concern. The men in it were alarming residents by drinking, reveling,littering andpoaching local produce, many refusing to or unable to find work. Newburgh police kept chasing the men away only to find they had reestablished themselves on the New Windsor side, where they had no jurisdiction nor (at the time) authority to pursue. Theyarrested those they could and eventually most of the group left of their own accord.[9]
The dam creatingChadwick Lake along the creek further upstream, where water came from lands that remain rural, was built by the Chadwick family in 1926. The lake was built for recreational purposes and remained in private hands until the Town of Newburgh purchased it for use as a water supply in 1962. Throughout the rest of the century, the factories clustered along the creek in the city of Newburgh continued to freely discharge wastes into it.
Nothing was done about this until 1984, whenRobert F. Kennedy, Jr., sentenced to 1,500 hours ofcommunity service with HudsonRiverkeeper after an arrest forheroin possession the year before, heard from the organization's founder, John Cronin, about local complaints about the pollution of Quassaick Creek. The work with Riverkeeper had led Kennedy to decide onenvironmental law as a career, and he resolved to identify all the polluters along the creek and sue them.
He and Cronin hiked along the lower seven miles (11 km) of the creek, taking notes and photos wherever they could. They dived and swam into ponds to collect samples, exposing themselves to rawsewage and manytoxins such asnaphthalene in the process. Theysnuck onto company roofs late at night to find illegal pipes. Eventually they identified 24 different sources of pollution and sued 16 different companies under the federalClean Water Act, all of whichsettled before trial and helpedclean up the lower Quassaick.[10] Kennedy has since cited the experience as anepiphany, the moment he grasped the connection betweenenvironmentalism and his family's traditional involvement insocial justice: "The battle for the environment ... was the ultimate civil rights and human rights contest, a struggle to maintain public control over publicly owned resources against special interests that would monopolize, segregate and liquidate them for cash."[11] Since then the creek has recovered to the extent that residents have begun planning on how it could be made accessible and used as a park.[12]
In December 2023, the organizationRiverkeeper was awarded nearly 4 million dollars in federal funding to remove Holden Dam, now failing and obsolete, from Quassaick Creek.[13]
Newburgh's first settlers arrived in the spring of 1709 — a ship of refugees originally from the Palatinate, a strip of land along the middle of the Rhine. Driven out byLouis XIV, the Palatines had taken shelter in England. Queen Anne sponsored their passage, granted them the land north of Quassaick Creek and charged them to make it productive. Soon the land was divided and conveyed officially to the Palatine settlers ... In 1714 a patent fromKing George awarded 50 acres (200,000 m2) to every man woman and child on the land,
All traces of the first Palatine settlement have vanished from Quassaick Creek.
Kennedy is in this fight for the long haul; he discovered his own life in the polluted waters of upstate New York, and he will not rest until he has cleaned up every stream.
