The Night Sergeant Douglass Fell
In April 1900, a shot out of the pitch-dark woods above the Cornell Dam construction camp killed a Mount Vernon militia sergeant who was re…
12 min read →Croton History
Seven thousand years of Croton-on-Hudson — stories, a full timeline, and a searchable archive of 10,707,815 words of primary sources, from the Kitchawank shell middens to the New Croton Dam.
Latest from Croton History
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History feature
When every Croton yard kept chickens
From manor rents paid in hens to a Revolutionary spy selling eggs, Croton's historical record is full of poultry — and the village's relationship with backyard livestock is older than the nation.
Recent Stories
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The Handsomest Young Man I Ever Saw
Sometime in the early months of 1781, at the Loyalist cavalry headquarters in Morrisania, Col. James DeLancey sentenced a young Horseneck m…
21 min read →
From the Timeline
Full timeline →
No timeline entries fall in July — here are the most recent chapters.
1948
Croton-on-Hudson gets hyphenated
The village officially adds hyphens to its name, becoming Croton-on-Hudson.
1960
Brennan excavates Croton Point shell middens
Louis Brennan discovers Vinette I pottery in stratigraphic position and establishes the middens as among the o…
1986
Croton Point landfill closes
After 59 years of operation, the dump is closed. Environmental remediation and capping begins — a process that…
2022
Daniel Nimham statue dedicated in Fishkill
An eight-foot bronze statue by sculptor Michael Keropian is unveiled, honoring the last Wappinger sachem who t…
Seven Thousand Years in Croton →
The full interactive timeline — from the first shell middens at Croton Point to the present, with sources and deep dives for every era.
Listen to Croton
All works →
♪ The Music New York Wrote About Croton Water →
Two competing Croton Waltzes from 1844, an 1842 temperance song and chorus, and Lydia Maria Child's “Oh, blessed be the Croton!” — original Library of Congress scores, page by page, with full lyric transcriptions.
Explore by Era
Indigenous history
The Kitchawank and 7,000 years at Croton Point
Colonial & the Manor
Van Cortlandt Manor and Dutch Westchester
Revolution & the Neutral Ground
Skinners, Cowboys, and the Arnold-André affair
The Aqueduct & the Dam
The engineering works that built New York
Village formation (1898)
Incorporation and the making of the village
Twentieth century
Harmon, Prohibition, and modern Croton
Explore by Place
Croton Point
Shell middens, vineyards, brickyards, a landfill, a park
Harmon
The suburban development that named a train station
Croton Landing
Steamboats, docks, and the riverfront
Quaker Bridge
The crossing above the gorge
The Dam
The world's tallest masonry dam, 1906
Van Cortlandt Manor
The 86,000-acre colonial estate
Featured Collection
Revolutionary Voices: The McDonald Interviews
Between 1844 and 1851, John M. McDonald interviewed Westchester County's last living Revolutionary War veterans and recorded their testimony in a series of notebooks. Browse 418 items from the collection — professional transcriptions courtesy of the Westchester County Historical Society — searchable page by page alongside the original manuscript images.
Search the Archive
Full-text search across 10,707,815 words in 1,596 source documents — with AI research reports built from the passages you find.