Renwick Brook

These are pictures of a stream that runs by my house in Ithaca. You can just catch glimpses of the house in the fourth, fifth, and sixth pictures, behind the trees. The pictures were taken the day after a heavy rain in May 2002, so the water level is higher than it usually is. In late summer the stream often shrinks to a trickle, and in winter there can be interesting ice formations on the falls. The stream is called Renwick Brook and it is shown on maps of the area from the early 1800s, such as this 1829 map where it appears just above the name "Renwick", flowing westward into Lake Cayuga. Here's a section of an 1866 map in which Renwick Brook is in the upper left, the second stream from the top. Running along the stream and crossing it at two points on this map is a road called Remington Road, evidently one of the earliest roads in the area. Here is a 1920 map that shows more roads crossing Remington that had been built in the intervening years. At the present time there are many other roads in the vicinity and Remington has become just a small side street in a residential area, which makes me happy since it's the street my house is on. In fact, a short segment of Remington was rerouted around 1920, and half of the discontinued piece has become part of my side yard. In the maps, this is in the small section of Remington located between the two places it crosses Renwick Brook.

(Click on the pictures for larger versions.)

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