BRONX FALLS

Curtis Blow famously said, “The Bronx is famous for two things, Hip Hop and 25 world championships.” The only borough of New York City that is attached to the mainland, has two freshwater rivers and waterfalls, and, I guess if you were a geologist, that’s what you would consider, three infamous things about the Bronx.

The waterfalls of the Bronx are more about the Borough’s relation to industry, than nature. Like Robert Dinero said, about his taxi duties, “It don’t make no difference to me.” I’ll take falls whatever or wherever they might be, but in the Bronx, the waterfalls, like the river itself, is a human creation. Most all of the falls are on the Bronx River and an be traced back to the use of the river as power source, transportation, and water supply. Using it as a food source ended, with industry and the needs of urban infrastructure that made life impossible in the waters of the river, until it started being cleaned up, and parkland, including a trail system, along the river continues to evolve.

There were, and, are, some exceptions to the use of the river as utility, and that would be the stretches where it runs through the botanical gardens and then into the Bronx zoo, but, one of the more interesting parks along the river was the Starlight Amusement Park about 2 miles before the the Bronx River meets the East River. One of this parks features wise it’s gigantic swimming pool, the largest saltwater pool in the world, which, believe it or not, got its water, filtered, from the Bronx River which ran straight through the park, and, at this point, had was subject to the tides of the East River and the Atlantic Ocean. Here, in the south Bronx, the river, situated between Soundview and Hunts Point, and West Farms in the north, has run down and through some of of the most densely populated and baddest neighborhoods in the city. It’s unusual location amongst industry and incredible urban density, was overshadowed by its unusual and bizarre history of events, including deaths on the parks rides, numerous drownings in the swimming pool, and many fires. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlight_Park

Starlight Amusement Park finally shut down in 1946 and became Starlight Park, run by the city, and also the Sheridan Expressway, and two small dams, here, remain from the old days when shipping by barge and boat reached this far north, almost to Fresh Farms.

The Bronx is the only borough of New York that is part of the mainland. It was also the only borough that has a river, and the Bronx River runs completely through it from north to south, from Yonkers to the East River. The two fresh water rivers in New York City, are in the Bronx, the other being the Hutchison River, that is east of the Bronx River in the Bronx flatlands.

The Bronx is also known for its elevations, exposed rock, and hills, so the chances that there are waterfalls, at least, exists. The thing is, that the entire river, in the Bronx, even though it doesn’t look that way, has been transformed into a channel. The wilder, wider river that had existed there for thousands of years when it was called, “Aquehung” was not such a straight shot as it is today, meandering and fuller, it took up much more real estate before Europeans arrived and began transform it into more uses than food and water, but a source of power, and that’s why the borough with the only real river, has remnant waterfalls from that era, while those in Van Cortlandt are more random and wild in nature, like it is in Westchester County, closer to its source which isn’t even its original source, that, of course, was damned for use as a reservoir.

The falls that still exist in the New York Botanical Gardens with the remnant dam of the Lorillard snuff mill.

The tradition of man-made waterfalls continues in the Bronx today, and, in 2019, the park service built one into the side of a cliff of Fordham schist, as a city park addition, in Crotona, on Longfellow Avenue, but not for a source of power or for grinding of grain or transportation, but natural edification in the city that is no longer equitable with industry.

Like the river, the waterfalls were made by the arriving Europeans who were building mills powered by moving water, along the Bronx River, and, were left, abandoned, after electricity and other power sources were introduced. Whatever natural falls that existed are long gone, as well as, the very course of the river itself.

As a side note, the ever-productive Europeans, who claimed, settled and named it, the Bronx, even built a dam in the Harlem River, called McCombs dam, until it was demolished in 1858, when the desire for use for unimpeded river traffic and transportation overtook it’s use as an early source of power.

Van Cortlandt Park, situated in the northwest Bronx, like Orchard Beach, has stretches where it’s easier to imagine the original geography of the Bronx, especially in areas, like Van Cortlandt Park, where an unnamed stream that drains water from the marsh in the Northwest woods, down into the Tibbets Brook drainage, along the Park’s golf course, where you find actual Bronx falls.

In this park you’ll find more remote and more natural waterfalls, but still located in the Bronx, where a lot of the water could also be run off from the Deegan expressway or other city streets and sewers.

The Bronx, the only borough with, a definitive article preceding it, and, the only place in New York City that you’ll find fresh water rivers. It’s not necessarily well known, as much as it is, obvious, and, thus, an actual Bronx thing.

Click on image to enlarge.