Dutchess Park Circa 1936

At the turn of the century, farms completely covered the Hudson Valley in a way that is hard to believe.   These farms were packed in tight, separated only by stone walls a few feet tall that criss-crossed the landscape.  A network of rail lines throughout Dutchess County transported the dairy and agricultural products to the residents of nearby New York City.

I recently found aerial photography of Dutchess County from 1936.  These old photographic images are remarkably detailed and show the size and extent that farming covered the landscape in the past.  The survey photos were taken in the Spring of 1936 and were captured in black and white on fabric medium roughly 2 feet x 3 feet in size!

Fiskill NY - 1936 (Click to enlarge)

Can you find:

Fishkill Creek

Dutchess Park Lake (Not shown on 1936 photo)

Brinkerhoff House

Rt 52 ,  Rt 82, Rt 9, Old Hopewell Road  

Here's an overlay I made by combining the old 1936 photo with a modern Google street map to show how an area in Fishkill NY called as Dutchess Park looked back then.  I used the major streets to align the two photos since they hadn't changed much.  The modern streets are convenient references on the old photo.  (As is the Dutchess Park Lake :-) )

Dutchess Park 1936 (Click to Enlarge)

The web site with all the Dutchess County images is:  http://gis.ny.gov/gisdata/inventories/details.cfm?DSID=1155.  Be forewarned... The files are a pain to work with because the encoded in TIFF format and are very large. I used Linux because the Windows couldn't handle the large file size.

Over time, these farms have been replaced by housing developments to the point that only subtle clues to the previous agricultural past can be found.... Such as the stone walls or remains of the rail lines.

Here's the same Google areal view from today.

Dutchess Park Today

The Fishkill rail spur along the Fishkill creek.  This was once one of the many active rail routes in this area. Many are now being converted to "rail trails"...

Tracks Along Fishkill Creek