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The fairly excellent Watercourses blog presents this post on Sunswick Creek, a waterbody which once existed here in Astoria, and still runs to the East River at Hallets Cove in Astoria, through manmade corridors deep below the modern streets.

No, really. Watercourses has been down there and has photos! More importantly, the post also carries two maps from the 1870s which show the early street plan of Astoria. Also, check out pefagan.com’s 1840 map of primeval Astoria.

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You’ll notice, on the Watercourses map, a “Ridge St.” and a “Camelia St.”. The road running between them is Broadway, and at its intersection with Vernon Ave. the latter takes a wicked hook and becomes Sunswick Creek XXX (at this moment, it remains obfuscated to me whether this is a street or avenue or road, I think I can hear somebody at Greater Astoria Historic Society sighing right now).

This bit of geographic reckoning, of course, is simplified by saying — “Stevens Est.” = Costco, and that weird mouth of the creek is Socrates Sculpture Garden, and these photos were shot just beyond where that little dock shape is, between the “n” and second “s” in Sunswick. (I also wanted to send a shout out to Watercourses. Well Done!)

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According to certain sources, two aboriginal realtors named Shawestcont and Erramorhar (as witnessed by their cohorts Warchan and Kethcanaparan) sold much of what we know as Astoria (but which they called Sintsinck) to William Hallett (who was similarly accompanied by a company of witnesses and countrymen)on August 1, 1664 — which is how Hallets Cove and Sunswick Creek got their English language place names.

Astoria itself was named, of course, by Stephen Halsey in the 1839 for John Jacob Astor, America’s richest man at the time.

Hey, Thanksgiving is coming and everyone always forgets that it wasn’t just Massachusetts or Virginia back then. Give thanks for the early Queensicans who laid out the world we live in.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.


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