A Fish Story: 1906
- By Bruce McKinney
Eddyville at its peak: 1840
Diminutive size has its advantages or had its advantages, when the smaller than small town of Eddyville in Ulster County, New York in the shadow of Rondout [now deceased] decided to conceal from public view and the prying eyes of nearby newspapers and neighborhood gossipmongers, facts that unvarnished might have damaged the budding reputation and dampened the ambitions of a community seeking to become the fishing capital of the world. Such is the price of ambition that conspiracies may emerge on the wings of best intentions, born to flight by the prospect of profit, the much-maligned footman to the wealthy. Almost to a man the male residents of the town owned frontage on the noble Rondout Creek, to hear it explained locally, a Riviera like France’s, only better. Local pride knew no bounds; neither did the need for ready money that was in short supply as misbegotten Americans, immigrants and tourists increasingly failed to appreciate the mystic power of the place. As luck would have it, as all eyes shifted west, a gory story threatening the prospects and property values of this little berg, unfolded: the disappearance of swimmers and the sighting of a monster during a peaceful summer swim in the mighty Rondout.
Disasters have a way of focusing the mind and potentially undermining the appeal of a community whose virtues had long gone unremarked except by clients of Longshore’s Saloon where a thirsty man could replenish fluids and retail gibberish. There, in the clouded awareness of the inebriated, the virtues of Eddyville went uncontested while distant places were damned, diminished and declared underrated. A visitor could be forgiven for feeling lost in time for if one asked for directions all references given were to the sixty year old Burr maps of Ulster County of the 1840s that showed Eddyville as the equal or better of most of the burgs, in fact a dominant place and veritable giant compared to the snip of a whistle stop Poughkeepsie just a few miles southwest. One had to go north to Albany or south to New York to find something more extravagant. Later maps would shrink and then drop Eddyville altogether, an insult and, to local minds, evidence of incompetence. As locals were wont to say, “they aut’ta knew better.” As a consequence, in the gathering sundown in Eddyville each night, the resurrection bruited on Sundays at the First Baptist found its confirmation on earth in the liquor-lubricated prospect that this little Lazarus would rise again. Again you ask?
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A Fish Story: 1906
- By Bruce McKinney
Eddyville: the railroad just a heartbeat away
The problem with the giant fish was not the first intimation of mortality the community had faced. Eddyville had had almost frequent close calls with destiny. The D&H [Delaware and Hudson] Canal was completed in 1828 for the purpose of carrying anthracite from the coalfields of Pennsylvania to New York City. It’s route tracked north reaching the Rondout Creek at Eddyville where the broadening span of the creek carried the canal-carried cargo onto Rondout, a deep-water inlet on the Hudson River a few miles east. By 1840, with business on the canal humming David Burr mapped Ulster County for his New York State Atlas and awarded Eddyville enough point size in the type to convey a noble and important place, perhaps to signify the importance of the canal. Locals didn’t see it that way. The problem later would be the pernicious railroads, then all in prospect but about, in some people’s minds, to become important. Whatever, the maps were in print and Eddyville had its copy. A few years later the railroads were exploding and the grandest idea of the age just past, canals, becoming road-kill on the path to the future. If Eddyville was disappointed the details have gone unreported. But like Casey at the bat it was strike one.
Strike two would not arrive for almost twenty-five years. The occasion would be the building of a north-south railroad connecting budding metropolises in Orange County with a string of hopefuls extending all the way to New York State’s first capital, Kingston, Rondout’s Siamese twin. This industrial enterprise called the Wallkill Valley Railroad, had been initially built from Maybook to Shawangunk where we assume its promoters found only cows and a few people to milk them. The promoters then issued a manifesto in 1863 with the proposed route for a further section – Shawangunk to Kingston. What with the war and all the plan was not enacted for another four years after which the line was constructed by local subscription. The 1863 map and plan, a signal document heralding the arrival of the industrial age to a county whose chief productions had hitherto been manure, cores and pits, showed, in graphic detail, the route and it would miss Eddyville by a whisker. Strike two. The final leg, on the way into Kingston would bypass Eddyville; passing close enough for hot embers to light local grass fires but not close enough for local citizens to use the train with any regularity. “We’ll hear it and smell it well enough but not use it much as it’s over the hill and about a mile away.” A few years later operation began and for several years the Wallkill Valley Railroad was an important link west. For Eddyville it was again a case of being the bridesmaid.
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A Fish Story: 1906
- By Bruce McKinney
The children can be replaced
In the ensuing decades Eddyville would nurse its wounds, contemplating success in ways that also exacted revenge. After all, what is the fun of winning if you can’t kick ‘em when they’re down. Sometime in the 1880’s the idea of Eddyville becoming a fishing resort town gained currency among the afternoon imbibers. Shad fish were already famous visitors on the Esopus Creek a few miles north. A project was then proposed to domesticate the shad and teach them to prefer Eddyville. A few did indeed come but not enough to support a fishing resort. The problem may have been the contributions upwater backsides were making to the flow. The water was getting murky.
Fast-forward some twenty years. A group of Eddyville’s happy children, swimming in the questionable creek during the summer of ought six - are accosted by a beast of epic proportions, a veritable Moby Dick. The town, still smarting from the decline in barge traffic and the railroad snub, was not about to see their reputation further trashed. The children could be replaced but the smirch on Eddyville’s good name would be enduring. Something would have to be done.
After examination and consultation it was concluded that the fish was between 3 and 20 feet long, weighing somewhere between a traveling bag and an elephant. They who believed the fish to be large encouraged those who thought it small to offer them selves as bait. “Can’t do no harm if you’re right.” Someone suggested putting a chicken on a hook that was tied by a rope to the town dock. Come morning the chicken, hook and rope were gone and one support for the dock pulled away. Overnight the fish grew in popular perception.
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A Fish Story: 1906
- By Bruce McKinney
The beast of Eddyville
Some militant souls then suggested shooting it and a caravan of boats was organized. A flotilla of men with guns and liquor set out and near to killed each other when the beast nudged [according to local legend] one of the boats over. The flailing of the men incited a near riot with bullets cleaving the air but no flesh. In the ensuing pandemonium the only thing safe was the fish.
At noon a delegation from Rosendale arrived claiming they had material information and a solution. They explained that Eddy, for that’s what they called it, was well known to them. For some forty years he’s been camped out at the butt end of the town’s sewage pipe, cleaning up what came his way. Recently he disappeared and when word of the ruckus down stream wafted over they suspected they knew the cause. They also knew what Eddy was looking for and encouraged guests at Longshore’s to contribute what they could.
At daybreak next some stout residents set out a pipe into the water and deposited into the slow moving creek what has come down to us as the “Longshore cocktail. Within moments Eddy appeared, seemingly pleased as punch but unaware the repast was salted with liquor, a last minute addition meant as a gift but as it turned out, a fatal contribution. An hour later he was belly-up.
A meeting was then called and representatives of neighboring communities invited. Three undertakers debated embalming or taxidermy and quickly established that the Eddy’s penchant for effluent rendered the meat, estimated at five hundred pounds and increasing with each telling, unappealing. The feast was then offered to Kingston and declined. An emergency mass was announced; the corpus carried through the town to First Baptist, the book of Mark chapter eight the chosen passage, the story of the fishes and loaves. Then in short order the Moby was laid to rest in a nearby swale and tastefully covered with soil, the mound thereafter increasing daily so to contain the beast’s scent.
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A Fish Story: 1906
- By Bruce McKinney
Eddyville in decline.
With the ending of this episode so too ended Eddyville’s resistance to the changes enveloping the county. The Burr map was retired. The library and school would close and later the post office. With the coming of cars the distance to Rondout, now itself swallowed whole by Kingston, seemed manageable. The canal a few years before had shut down and the railroad was declining. Soon residents would claim to miss the sound of the approaching trains, their steady flow six trains up and six trains down now ebbing. In 1922 all passenger traffic would end.
The Lord does not deal aces to every player and the residents of Eddyville in all its years held only one strong hand, and that briefly, when the D&H opened. But they played their cards well and straight and no man or woman driving on Route 211 past the Eddyville signs should let the moment go unremarked. History was made here.
Editor’s note. We know Eddyville achieved major importance in the early 19th century as the terminus of the D&H Canal, which brought coal from the Pennsylvania coalfields to the Hudson River, and on to New York. We know the early railroads sprung up in the area and perhaps it had an opportunity to retain its importance for a while. We know it was displayed on the Burr map of 1840 as a major point between New York and Albany. Finally, we know from these postcards it was a great fishing hole in the early 20th century. But the rest...
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