Early Maps and a Foreign Landscape For the first century of its existence, the city remained a fragile outpost in a wilderness that seemed inconceivably vast to its European inhabitants. This process of land reclamation and earthmoving was the physical manifestation of the city's ambition, a deliberate act of imposing human order on a chaotic natural world.
New York Islands Peninsulas Creek Network: Mapping the Pre-Settlement Landscape
The Dutch established the trading post of New Amsterdam in the early 17th century, a crude collection of log cabins and fortifications huddled together for protection on the tip of Manhattan. The Collect Pond, a vital freshwater source and scenic landmark, was buried beneath Canal Street after becoming a polluted health hazard.
Shell middens, the ancient trash heaps of these early inhabitants, are the most tangible proof of their existence, revealing a diet rich in shellfish, fish, and game, and a life intimately connected to the natural rhythms of the land and sea. Freshwater springs and streams flowed freely, unpolluted and abundant.
New York Islands Peninsulas Creek Network: Mapping the Pre-City Landscape
The 19th Century: Erasing the Landscape The 19th century was the era of the great erasure, a period of frantic and systematic reshaping of the land itself to accommodate a booming population. Before the five boroughs pulsed with the synchronized rhythm of traffic and the skyline became a permanent fixture, the land that would become New York was a sprawling tapestry of wetlands, winding rivers, and dense, old-growth forest.
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