Stewart State Forest and Stewart International Airport are both named for the Stewart family who owned a dairy farm called Stony Lonesome at the site of the current day airport. Stony Lonesome was split between the towns of New Windsor and Newburgh and in 1930 the Stewart family donated the farm to the town of Newburgh with the hope that it would become an airport. This didn’t happen in 1930 but with time it became an air training facility for West Point cadets, an Air Force and National Guard base and eventually included a regional airport offering commercial flights. Passenger, cargo and military jets fly over and land on what once was Stony Lonesome and still earlier, part of the original Coldengham property.
Stewart State Forest also has a complicated history that is reflected in what exists there today. Bordered on the north by Interstate 84 and the airport to the east, it is crossed by high power lines and the remnants of former town roads. Abandoned farms are juxtaposed with forest and wetlands and it all forms a peculiar mix of the bucolic and the mundane. A part of the original Coldengham patent lies within the borders of the State Forest although only the Great Swamp has the possibility of looking anything like it did back then. Watching the Great Blue Herons that nest in the swamp can make me feel as if time has stood still but this only lasts until another incoming Fed Ex jet makes it’s final descent to the airport.
