Rookeries

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.

Feats of Engineering

There are a variety of references to the Colden Canal, built by Jane’s father, Cadwallader Colden. The earliest I have found is an article by John M. Eager published in The Historical Magazine in March of 1864. This article and others state that between 1728 and 1760, using Tin Brook, Cadwallader Colden built a canal on his property to transport fuel and building supplies. This canal is believed to be the first freshwater canal in what is now the United States and was a practical means of transportation when there were few roads through the wooded landscape. While rudimentary, it is considered a predecessor to the great canals and inland waterways of later periods and demonstrates the engineering abilities of Cadwallader Colden.

The source of the canal is in the Great Swamp that lies south of the original Colden home. Portions of the swamp were drained to provide peat for fuel and in this bog meadow Colden used stone to widen Tin Brook and construct a feeder pond for the canal. In the 1864 article Eager writes, “Portions of this work are still visible upon the meadow, now one of the best and most valuable portions of grazing land in that county.” In a 1967 survey conducted by the New York State Historic Trust, Malcolm Booth reports the current purpose of the site as pasture, the condition as poor and endangered by the construction of Interstate 84. He recommends a state marker.

I’ve been told by a few people in the Coldengham Preservation and Historical Society that the last remaining pieces of canal construction are part of Stewart State Forest in what was the northwest corner of Little Britain but can’t be seen because of long term flooding caused by beavers. In fact, the beaver flooding is clearly marked on the Trail and Facilities Map of Stewart State Forest and going there, I see that the beavers have performed their own marvel of engineering. Their pond is large and full and completely obscures any sign of stone.

Assuming that the construction is really there, I can place another dot on my map and greatly expand the Coldengham property line towards the south and well away from the cluster of red dots representing the Colden homes and cemetery.