The Saw Kill is a tributary of the Hudson River, called the Metambesem by the Algonquin people of the area and sometimes called Sawkill Creek today. It rises in the town of Milan and drains a area of northwestern Dutchess County, New York, that includes most of the town of Red Hook to the west and part of Rhinebeck to Red Hook's south.
It flows predominantly through forests and farmland. Just above its mouth, it descends more steeply through a wooded area with several waterfalls into South Tivoli Bay, between the Montgomery Place estate and Bard College, which uses the stream as both its primary water source and for disposal of its treated wastewater. In the 1840s, the owners of those properties made an agreement to prevent development along the stream, one of the earliest such conservation measures in American history.
Course
The Saw Kill at first descends rapidly through the hills in Milan and eastern Red Hook where it rises. As those hills level out, it then meanders slowly across the flatter, more developed areas closer to the village of Red Hook, then at Annandale-on-Hudson once again descends rapidly to its mouth.
Upper stream
The Saw Kill rises on the slopes of an unnamed hill, just east of Broadview Lane in the town of Milan, at an elevation of approximately above sea level. It flows southwesterly through forested land for its first half-mile (1 km), descending as it does, until it reaches a small farm pond at the edge of some cleared land and turns to the northwest as it flows out. Over its next mile (1.6 km), crossing more fields, it gradually bends southwest again until it flows under a farm road and, its uppermost crossing, and reaches another, larger farm pond roughly a thousand feet (300 m) east of Milan Hill Road (Dutchess County Route 54), having lost another in elevation.
From the pond's outlet the Saw Kill flows first westerly, then turning strongly to the south southwest as it enters a wooded ravine closely paralleling Milan Hill Road for the next 1,800 feet (600 m). By the time it reaches the swampy areas where it flows under New York State Route 199 (NY 199), the uppermost public crossing of the stream, it has dropped to above sea level. Just past the highway, it bends to the west and runs roughly parallel to it.
For its next mile the Saw Kill widens its distance from the highway, flowing into another small farm pond, behind an auto-body shop, Milan's fire garage and another farm, crossing under two more farm roads in the process. After the last one, a covered bridge, it flows into another farm pond approximately 300 feet (100 m) long, turning north then west. At its outlet it turns north again where it soon flows under both Old Mill Road and NY 199 again through a long culvert at the hamlet of Rock City. North of this it flows into a small unnamed lake, above sea level, where it receives an unnamed tributary from the northeast. It exits that lake flowing to the west southwest again, crossing under Sawmill Road adjacent to its junction with Rock City Road and then, 150 feet (50 m) downstream, under NY 199 again, as both enter the town of Red Hook.
After this crossing, the Saw Kill flows roughly west through some swampy areas along the Rhinebeck town line for the next half-mile, in a wooded corridor south of a golf course. After receiving the Sepasco Lake outlet stream from the south, it bends northwest again, into a small lake. At the end of the lake a small private footbridge crosses, then the stream bends and descends to in elevation through a series of cascades alongside Oriole Mills Road to Camp Rising Sun.
Lower stream
The Saw Kill then flows generally north through level ground for its next mile, beginning to meander as it passes Sky Park Airport. Just short of NY 199, it receives its only named tributary, the Lakes Kill, from the north, and turns west again, following the highway to the south for 600 feet (200 m), before crossing under it for the fourth and final time. From there it distances itself from the road as it takes a more northwesterly heading.
The surrounding terrain remains generally flat but more fields begin to abut the stream corridor as it turns more to the north and crosses under Echo Valley Road. It remains on an almost northerly course for the next half-mile, flowing through a narrow wooded corridor between fields, to where U.S. Route 9 crosses. The Saw Kill bends to the northwest past this bridge, and toughly 2,000 feet (600 m) from US 9, it turns to the west and then southwest, still in a forested corridor through worked agricultural land.
As it reaches the Mill Road bridge, the Saw Kill widens into a lake, at elevation, created by a dam southwest of the crossing, that extends 1,500 feet (500 m) to the northwest as well. Past the dam, now wider, it continues to flow southwest in a wooded corridor past a Red Hook town park on the west, just outside the Red Hook village line before it flows under Linden Avenue (Dutchess County Route 79). West of Linden it meanders again as it flows to the west for the next mile, just inside the edge of a large wooded area that abuts worked fields, then turns northwestward to cross under Aspinwall Road.
Over its next thousand feet (300 m), the Saw Kill turns west, receives another unnamed tributary from the north, then turns southwest to cross under Aspinwall Road again. The surrounding area remains level and heavily wooded but now on either side of the stream are large residential lots. The Saw Kill follows the rear lines of lots along West Bard Avenue west and then briefly north to Kelly Road, where it bends southeast again to cross under New York State Route 9G having descended from the lake at Mill Road to above sea level.
The Saw Kill first flows parallel to 9G, then bends quickly to back to the northeast, where it is again dammed in the hamlet of Annandale-on-Hudson, part of the Hudson River Historic District, a National Historic Landmark (NHL), before flowing under its last crossing at River Road (Dutchess County Route 103). It flows north, parallel to the road, until turning northwest at Cedar Hill Road, part of the Bard College campus. At this point, it begins to descend again rapidly over a series of waterfalls and cascades, reaching in elevation in just 150 feet (50 m).
Amidst woods again, with the historic Montgomery Place estate, another NHL, on its south side, the stream turns north for 500 feet (150 m), then west northwest where it again descends over Zabriskie's Falls to bring it down to in elevation. Foot trails parallel it on both sides as it descends through more cascades to empty into the Hudson River.
Watershed
The Saw Kill watershed covers , with the stream and its tributaries totalling . It includes more of the town of Red Hook than any of its other watersheds, stretching from its mouth west to expand enough to include almost all of the village and most of the town west of it. In Milan, the watershed covers a roughly semicircular area of the eastern half of town. The Rhinebeck portion, the smallest of any of the three towns in the watershed, includes the areas around Sepasco Lake and a large swampy area near the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome from which an unnamed tributary arises.
Terrain in the watershed is hilly and wooded at its eastern end, with the highest point, an unnamed hill, north of Willow Glen Road in Milan. Just east of the Red Hook–Milan town line, the hills level off into gently rolling land, much of which is under cultivation. As the stream approaches the Hudson, the land becomes wooded again and slightly hillier, as it reaches the sloping land adjacent to the river bank.
According to a 1991 study, land in the watershed is 51.1% forested, with 31% second-growth deciduous, 14% coniferous and 4% mixed cover. Another 25.8% is agricultural, mostly hayfields or row crops. Low-density residential use accounts for 7.5%, with medium- and higher density areas taking up another 5.4%; most of this use is in the village of Red Hook or subdivisions in the outwash plain north of it. Farmsteads bring total residential use to 13.6%. Commercial use accounts for only 2.8% of the watershed; again most of this is concentrated in the village of Red Hook. Lakes and wetlands cover 2%.
There are no significant protected areas in the watershed. However, several conservation organizations hold easements preventing development on large tracts. Scenic Hudson has the largest, to the northeast of the village of Red Hook covering much of the Lakes Kill subwatershed, as well as another, smaller tract west of the village and north of NY 199, just west of Red Hook High School. It also holds the easements on the Montgomery Place and Bard College properties abutting the stream's lowest section. The Dutchess Land Conservancy holds easements to a large tract abutting the Scenic Hudson easement on its northwest, some of which overlaps into the Stony Creek watershed to the north. A portion of the tributary from the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome is covered by a Winakee Land Trust easement.
History
Formation
The Saw Kill grew from one of the many tributaries of Lake Albany, a proglacial lake that filled most of the Hudson Valley north of the Hudson Highlands centered on the present-day location of Albany during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the last ice age, 12–15,000 years ago. At the time of its existence the lake filled the valley up to what is now the contour line, roughly where the Saw Kill today drops through a series of cascades to Camp Rising Sun in Red Hook. The retreat of the lake as it flowed southward to become today's river left the glacial outwash plain the stream flows through from there to the river's current escarpment at Annandale and eventually into the Hudson.
Early human use
As the glaciers melted and the Hudson formed, animals and plants that came back to the region found tributaries like the Saw Kill good places to re-establish themselves and gradually followed them into the interior. The Native American tribes that settled in the region afterwards found them similarly useful, as paths between settlements. They also hunted and fished the stream for sustenance. Archeological investigations at Montgomery Place, south of the stream's mouth, have found evidence of the land's use as a hunting ground 5,000 years ago.
1620s–1803: Development
The Dutch began settling the region in the 1620s. The first settlers followed the lead of the Indians in using the tributaries as transportation routes and food sources. However, as more Dutch settlers arrived, they began to see the stream as an ideal place to build mills, particularly the sawmills that gave it its name. Land speculators bought water rights to the Saw Kill before anything had been built.
The Saw Kill and the majority of the land north of the Saw Kill watershed was sold to Colonel Pieter Schuyler in 1688. His patents for Rhinebeck lasted until 1840. The deed paperwork refers to the Saw Kill as the Metambesem, the Algonquin name for it, which has not otherwise survived.
Schuyler's patents slowed agricultural development rates along the Saw Kill, despite rapid agricultural expansion in Dutchess County starting in 1750. Sawmills and gristmills were nevertheless built. By 1777 they were present not only near the stream's mouth but upstream at the present-day locations of Red Hook Mills, where Mill Road crosses and the stream is still impounded into a small lake, and Rock City. Mills were commonplace along the stream by the end of the 18th century. Milling died down by the end of the 19th due to decreased profitability.