Sawmill River, Underneath Downtown Yonkers
Yonkers, NY

Around 1650, long before Yonkers was established as a city and even before New York became New York, a Dutch landowner named Adriaen van der Donck built a water-powered sawmill on Nepperhan Creek near the Hudson River. That sawmill became the center of a town that was later to become known as Yonkers (incorporated as a village in 1855, and officially recognized as a city in 1872.)

The sawmill that Van der Donck built also gave a new name to Nepperhan Creek, which has been known as the Sawmill River ever since. As Yonkers grew, though, it grew around and over the small river. As more industrial and residential buildings were built in the 19th century, some straddled the river. Sections of it were shunted through underground flumes, and road bridges were built across other parts of it, until eventually the city decided to simply cover over the last exposed sections of the river. By the early 1900s, the river was completely underground for the section that passes through downtown Yonkers.

Walking through the underground river gives a fascinating glimpse into Yonker's past. The structures that contain and pass over the river range widely, from 19th-century bridges of logs and stone arches to the foundations of more recent buildings.

In this photo, an explorer stands underneath a brick arch below the wooden timbers of a building. Some of the wooden beams are visible through the hole in the brick roof of the tunnel.