It's amazing how we ignore rivers and streams unless we want to pilot a boat, or swim in them. They're seen as roadblocks that must be crossed as we whisk around going nowhere. Historically, bridging streams and rivers was a big deal - quite the engineering feat - but they were also the center of activity during the 19th century as power to our industries, and as a way to transport goods and people. They were the focal point for human endeavor.

There is a movement to clean up our rivers and streams and turn them into "green" spaces. Bike paths are built along them along with new docks and marinas. Overall it seems like a good idea .

Last week, we discussed how the Poestenkill provided water power for several early 19th century mills in Troy. By the early 1960's, this stream system was all but dead as a power source and out of the minds of most Trojans.

When you explore the early literature about the Poestenkill Valley it's easy to appreciate the beauty that early colonists saw when they hiked from the river to the Falls, just below Pawling Avenue. Before the Europeans arrived, the confluence of the river and stream was home to a large Mohican Indian village. Fish and deer and other game animals inhabited the stream valley. During the 19th century, the Falls was a favorite picnic and swimming site for Trojans young and old. Foreign artists sketched the Falls to publish in books about America. The stream valley was also a favorite for early scientists studying its geology, flora and fauna.

It didn't take long for people to start destroying the beauty of the valley. Early mill owners canaled part of the lower Poestenkill to divert water to power, and Benjamin Marshall drilled a 600 foot hole through the bedrock for his mills. Many mills and factory buildings were built right into the gorge and valley walls along the side of the stream wiping out any indigenous plant and animal life. In the name of progress, of course.

As we moved away from the natural water course as a central place, and as turnpikes, canals, and rail became the defacto mode of movement, rivers and streams became more of a nuisance. A place to cross. A place to dump garbage.

Troy and Albany battled in court who would build the first bridge across the river and gain a foothold on commerce in the early 19th century. Streams were cannibalized by diverting them in culverts and buried. In fact, try to locate the Piscawenkill, the other major stream that still flows through the city.

When I was a kid, we use to go down to the foot of the old Congress Street bridge and watch the water "boil" as millions of eels fed off the raw sewage that was dumping into the river on both banks.

In 1975, a movement began to put the Poestenkill on the National Register of Historic Places and saw success in March 1978. Millions of dollars of public money was acquired from the city to build an interpretative trail system on the south side of the ravine. Vandals burned most of it. It fell into neglect, and shortly after I watched fill from a nearby housing construction site being pushed into the ravine.

You can now pull your car off into a small parking lot and view the falls or walk down (on top of the grass covered fill). This certainly takes away from the beauty of the ravine.

Shortly after the author John McPhee mentioned how the Poestenkill Gorge was one of the best sites for mini hydro generation, the local Mercer Company built a mini hydro plant. During the construction of this site, old articles in the Record reveal quite the battle between preservationists over the lack of care in protecting the standing remains of the mills. In fact, there are no standing remains left in the gorge to speak of.

Further up the gorge, the Belden Pond dam, which helped supply the water to the hydro plant, collapsed and the city, Mercer, and Mt. Ida Preservation Society tried to hammer out a compromise to bring the pond back to a natural level while providing a new dam. Unfortunately, according to the preservationists, the new dam is too high and in danger of flooding nearby property on the north bank of the stream.

Today, there is a plan to reinvent the trail system into the gorge and connect it to the proposed Mt. Ida (Prospect) Park trail system.

For this beautiful work of nature, a trail system and the attention it would bring to this unique area of natural and human history can't come to soon.