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🏘️ Croton Local History
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dam, February, 1934. Ice along the road to the New Croton Dam, February, 1934. Click the image to enlarge it. In the winter of 1934, members of the Bagley family of Peekskill made a visit to the New Croton Dam, recorded in this series of snapshots.
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Each has a penned inscription on the back and is stamped with the month and year. The photographs were recently acquired at an estate sale in Cortlandt along with other images of Peekskill, Bear Mountain Bridge, Camp Smith and more. We plan to post
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those images in the coming weeks. If you’re a Crotonite, don’t miss the last image of the ice-covered rocks along Route 129. Looks familiar, doesn’t it? The Bagley family stopped their car to take the photo 87 years ago. You can click on the images
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to enlarge them. 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 in new window) X Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
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Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Published December 5, 2015 February 2, 2021
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Postcard, circa 1918, when the Nikko Inn was known as the Harmon Country Club. Courtesy of Carl Oechsner. In the June 18, 1931 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle , arts and entertainment writer Rian James 1 used his column to promote the 8th edition
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of his vest-pocket Gadabout Guide to New York’s most unusual Restaurants, Night Clubs, Roadhouses. The “Wide-Open Spaces Department” of his column gives us a flavor of life on the roads during the Depression (when, as James puts it, “the man in the
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streets . . . lost his stocks and socks”) and a priceless description of the Nikko Inn in the 1930s. “If you like the wide open spaces, and you don’t mind spending the better part of your life sitting in traffic—the open-road houses beckon to you
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shut-ins to come out to play—and pay! We know all about the open road and open road houses, because we have devoted nearly a whole month out of our life to finding out things. The roads are good, and crowded; the road-houses are good and not nearly
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crowded, and judging by the numbers of automobiles that scrape the varnish off your left fender, you’d hardly know there was a depression. 2 The thing that drives home the fact that there is a depression is the way the drivers of smaller cars hang
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grimly onto their steering wheels. They hang onto their steering wheels with two hands . . . just as though at any moment now a big, burly traffic cop would come up and attempt to wrest their prize plaything right out of their grasp.” After reviewing
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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