🏘️ Croton Local History
Blog posts, articles, and community histories by local historians
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road houses in New York City, Long Island, the Bronx and lower Westchester, James concludes his column with this pithy description: “Nikko Inn, at Harmon-on-the-Hudson (all with hyphens), which is the hoity-toitiest spot extant, providing you’ve got
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girl, and there’s enough moon. You can play around here in a canoe until dinner’s ready. And if this summary sounds a little hasty, or sketchy, or something, remember that it’s the best we can do considering the roads. And have a nice time!” Canoe on
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the Croton River, south of the Nikko Inn. The Nikko can be seen on the cliff in the upper right. Courtesy of the Westchester County Historical Society. According to Wikipedia Rian James must have had quite a life. “A ‘Jack of all trades’, James was a
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columnist covering arts and entertainment for the Brooklyn Eagle from about 1928 to 1935. He later was a foreign correspondent, parachute jumper, stunt man, airmail pilot, Air Force lieutenant, vaudeville actor, and finally, writer, director and
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producer.” ↩︎ All quotations are from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle , June 30, 1931, page 21, columns 1 and 2. See here . ↩︎ Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new
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window) Facebook Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Croton River Harmon
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Harmon Country Club Harmon-on-Hudson Nikko Inn Published February 14, 2016 February 14, 2016
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Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, courtesy of the Library of Congress. This photograph of the New Croton Dam was published in the “Rotogravure Picture Section” of the Sunday, December 14, 1919 issue of the New York Times with the caption: Niagara
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Falls by Man’s Own Hand: For the first time in fourteen years water is flowing over the huge dam of the Croton Reservoir at the estimated rate of 2,000,000,000 gallons a day, the vast tide dropping to the Croton River, 150 feet below. The photo was
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taken by Underwood & Underwood, a pioneer in the field of news bureau photography. Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X (Opens
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in new window) X Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Underwood & Underwood Published February 17, 2016
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The Hudson River National Defense Fleet, December 14, 1947. Courtesy of the New York State Archives. Here are some dramatic aerial photos of what locals call the Ghost Fleet, taken soon after the ships were moved north from Tarrytown to Jones Point
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(at one time known as Caldwell’s Landing) at the foot of Dunderberg Mountain. The anchorage remained at that location until the last two ships were towed away on July 8, 1971, to be sold for scrap to Spain. The Hudson River National Defense Fleet,
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December 14, 1947. Courtesy of the New York State Archives. The fleet, officially known as the Hudson River National Defense Fleet and the Hudson River Reserve Fleet, was established by an act of Congress in 1946 “to provide a sizable group of
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merchant ships to support the military effort at the outset of any war.” 1 According to an article published in the journal of the Rockland County Historical Society in 1972 (adapted online here ): “When foreign nations at the outbreak of World War I
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had diverted their ships for wartime service, the small American Merchant Marine fleet was unable to transport even 10 per cent of normal foreign exports. Docks in major ports were stocked high with products of American farms and factories for which
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no ships were available. When foreign vessels were again available, their rates were ruinous. . . . The fleet was at its peak with 189 ships in July of 1965. Anchored in ten rows, it extended from the fleet office at the Jones Point dock several
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miles to the south—to the Lovett Orange and Rockland Power Plant and the Boulderberg House at Tomkins Cove. Several viewing points were established along Route 9W for the hundreds of motorists who stopped daily to look at the ships. During the Korean
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War, a total of 130 ships were taken from the Hudson River fleet leaving only 39 ships. During the Suez Crises in 1956, 35 ships were put back into service when British and French ships were diverted from trade routes to supply their nations’ armed
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forces. The Vietnam War required more than 40 ships. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1953 needed storage space for large volumes of government-owned wheat, it turned to the Hudson River Reserve fleet. During the following ten years more
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than 53,563,948 bushels of wheat were loaded into 231 ships. Approximately 255,000 bushels of wheat were stored in each ship with the number of ships carrying wheat at any given time ranging from 70 to 90. The last ship was unloaded in 1963. Ships
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that had stored wheat rose about twelve feet higher above the water surface and exposed a bright orange band of rust. A ventilation system had been installed in the ships, making it possible to maintain the quality of the wheat for long periods of
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storage. This saved the U.S. government some five million dollars on commercial storage estimates. None of the grain, sold to foreign countries in the 1960s, was found to be spoiled when unloaded. . . . The ships were kept in condition . . . by a
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crew of 86 men under the supervision of Charles R. Gindroz of Pearl River, fleet superintendent and one-time chief engineer on the George Washington, the ship which years before had carried President Woodrow Wilson to France and in 1950 burned at
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Baltimore. The reserve fleet ships, valued at over $255 million, had their machinery turned over periodically and their internal surfaces sprayed with a coat of preservative oil on a regular basis. Electrical equipment, such as generators and motor
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wiring, were cleaned and coated with a fungus-retarding varnish. All loose scale and rust were water-blasted off decks, hulls and superstructures. Then the entire outside of the ships was sprayed with a gray-tinted preservative oil. This was done at
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least once a year on each ship. The underwater portion of the hull was protected by means of an electric current, a method known as cathodic protection . . . preventing corrosion from taking place.” The images shown here come from a large collection
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of aerial photos at the New York State Archives, which has been scanned and made available online . These specific photos must be missing identifying information other than dates because they all have vague descriptions like “Multiple boats in the
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water in an unknown location, possibly in the Hudson River.” This archival mystery about the fabled Ghost Fleet is fitting because Dunderberg Mountain and Caldwell’s Landing have long been associated with ghosts, goblins and Captain Kidd’s treasure.
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We will have much more to say about those legends in a future post. . . . Quote from the online adaptation of the article by article by Scott Webber from South of the Mountains , the journal of the Rockland County Historical Society, Vol. 16, No. 2,
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