Ponck Hockie was a landing point for British troops

By Bond Brungard
For the Poughkeepsie Journal

Lilacs are planted along this rocky point that Dutch settlers named Ponck Hockie. The vibrant, purple bushes are descendants of those planted when Kingston Point Park was the main terminus for steamer traffic, docking for passage into the Catskill Mountains.

Now it's a place to fish, relax, get married or commemorate the life of a deceased relative or friend.

"A lot of people come down at noon for lunch just to get away from the office," said Bill Schreiber. He and other members of the Kingston Rotary Club maintain.

"It's just a whole bunch of people working together," said Richard White, a Rotary Club member.

From Rhinecliff, across the Hudson River in Dutchess County, Ponck Hockie looks like any other waterfront industrial area, with the lilacs at Kingston Point Park dwarfed by adjacent fuel oil storage tanks.

But beyond the silver, rusting tanks exists an area that was an early Dutch settlement more than 300 years ago. It has evolved into one of Kingston's sleepy little neighborhoods.

British disembark troops

The Dutch established a trading post further inland along the Rondout Creek waterfront in the late 1600s, but it was the British who really took advantage of the strategic and convenient importance of Ponck Hockie, a Dutch term believed to mean a point of land.

Soon after Kingston became New York state's first capital in 1777, British troops disembarked at Ponck Hockie at the mouth at the Rondout Creek, along the Hudson River. The soldiers marched through the city and burned it to the ground.

Following the Revolutionary War, Ponck Hockie created its own economy through cement mining and shipping. Lime deposits were mined from High Falls to Kingston, including a hill in Ponck Hockie. Hasbrouck Park now sits atop the mine, which lasted for about 50 years -- from around 1840 through 1890.

"There are still tunnels around," said Ed Ford, the city historian. "They're dangerous and filled with water."

Following the demise of the natural cement industry, Ponck Hockie became a popular stopover for those seeking the cleaner air of the Catskill Mountains.

An amusement park created a lot of excitement there from the turn of the century until around 1920. Kingston Point attracted boatloads of visitors from the Hudson River and in 1903 drew about 1 million visitors.

By the late 1920s the area's popularity had waned.

Ford, a 10-year-old in 1928, took a trolley down to the park and found little as a boy to enjoy. "There wasn't a single (building) left in the amusement park," he said.