A photo of Rondout Creek looking west or upstream. The bridge is the trestle of the West Shore Railroad, completed in I 882, and the photo was probably taken shortly thereafter. Paddling upstream , towards the D & H Canal entrance, is the towboat Silas 0 . Pierce with a canal boat alongside. Photo courtesy John F . Matthews collection .
concrete, and in some cases the depletion of the clay banks. Where there were once over a hundred brickyards in the Hudson Valley, today there is only one. The introduction of Portland cement around the turn of the century, with its fast drying or curing, effectively brought down the curtain on the widespread use of Rosenda le cement and bluestone . In the interwar period , the rapid growth of the automobile, the use of motor trucks with their door-to-door pickup and delivery, and the construction of highways to accomodate them carried away virtually a ll of the fre ight and agricultural products that were once borne by the steamboat. The family auto and new highways gave individuals a mobility never before possible and changed foreve r the vacation patterns of generations. The northern Catskills became largely passe as a prime vacation retreat. Shipbuilding sputtered on along the Rondout , helped primarily by the construction of minesweepers, submarine chasers and tu gboats at two of the surviving yards durin g World War II , and by the bui lding of minesweepers, barges and landing craft during the Korean War. Shortly thereafter both yards ceased operations. The Cornell Steamboat ComSEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1985
pany di sappeared from the scene in 1958. Today , Rondout Creek is devoted almost entirely to marinas harboring broods of privately owned sailboats and motorboats . The commercial activity consists of a stone quarry a mile-and-ahalf upstream , a barge repair yard , a boat shop and rigging loft at the Hudson Ri ver Maritime Center, and the operation of a tour and cruise boat- the Marion T. Budd-during the summer months. From its birth as a port, brought about by the opening of the D & H Canal in 1828, until its decline roughl y a century later, coincident with the onset of the
Great Depression of the 1930s, the Rondout had a robust and colorful history, It is fittin g that the Maritime Center, now in its fi fth year, should be located on Rondout Creek , at what was once the center of the village of Rondout , to preserve for future generations photographs , artifacts and memorabilia of a highly interesting slice of local history and of a Hudson River era that is all but forgotten . ..J,
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Mr. Mabie, a director of the Hudson River Maritime Center, is past president of the Steamship Historical Society of America. 15