Titus Mill-Pond & New York State Tidal Wetlands
Titus Mill Pond & New York State Tidal Wetlands is located at the northeastern end of New Rochelle Harbor in the city of New Rochelle in Westchester, New York. The waters in the harbor and pond flow from Long Island Sound, with tides up to eight feet in the inlet and with no fresh water stream entering into it.[1]
History
Titus Mill Pond was the former site of the Lispenard Mill. In 1708 Antoine Lispenard bought from Jacob Leisler's son a half interest in the peninsula between New Rochelle Harbor and Long Island Sound. Six years later he bought the other half. Across the inlet he built a dam and a tidal grist mill . Each incoming tide filled a mill-pond behind the dam, and then, as the tide ebbed, the water was released through a millrace to turn the mill wheel. Nearby the mill-pond, on the neck itself, Lispenard built his home, a stone house of one-and-a-half stories, with the front eaves extending to form the roof of a wide porch. [2] The Lispenard family was part of the group of Huguenot refugees who established New Rochelle in the late seventeenth century. Antoine Lispenard was the son of an important emissary of the English colonial government. [3]
Titus Mill Pond New York State Tidal Wetlands
The Titus Mill Pond State Tidal Wetlands are situated at the eastern edge of the pond, where the Davenport's Neck peninsula connects to the mainland. The park is a New York State protected natural resource area, classified as a formerly connected tidal wetlands zone in which normal tidal flow is restricted by man-made causes, or in this instance, the Lispenard-Titus grist-mill and dam. It is an intertidal marsh, consisting of a vegetated, tidal wetland zone lying between the average high and low tidal elevation of New Rochelle Harbor and the Titus Mill Pond. The predominant vegetation here is low marsh cordgrass, Spartina alterniflora. The water in the wetlands is saltwater from Long Island Sound.
References
- ^ Title=Long Island Sound historic centers of maritime activity: final report;Author=New York Historic Maritime Areas Advisory Committee, Dept. of State, New York (State). Dept. of Environmental Conservation;Publisher= The Committee, 1997
- ^ newrochellenews.info - Lispenard-Rodman-Davenport House
- ^ Larsen, Neil (July 1986). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Lispenard-Rodman-Davenport House". New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2010-06-17.