Vestal Heritage - Vestal, NY - Signs of History on Waymarking.com

" Badger's Mill - This 1830 map shows five islands in the Susquehanna River in the area now called Castle Gardens. For a time two dams channeled the river flow to provide water power for Badger's Saw Mill on the south bank at the bottom of the map. Water and steam-powered mills for lumbering Vestal's heavily forested hills were a prominent industry until approximately 1875"

"LaTourette Farm House - This stately Federal-style home at the end of Castle Gardens Road was built by Peter LaTourette in approximately 1810. Hollow tree trunks transported to cold spring water to the house leading to its local name, Cold Spring Farm. LaTourette operated a shad fishery in the Susquehanna behind the house."

"Ward B. Castle Farm - Ward B. Castle purchased 24 acres of land between Old Owego Road (now Castle Gardens Road) and the Susquehanna River in 1919, moving his family into the old two family farmhouse. It would be 1925 before he built the first greenhouse...the beginnings of Castle Gardens farm. Castle's three sons ran the business until their retirement in 1978. The rich river soil grew abundant crops of notable size without the need for fertilizer. Tobacco was once grown on the land long before Ward B. Castle purchased the property."

"Part of the Hooper Patent, the unincorporated hamlet of Ross Corners, located in the western portion of the town, derives its name from prominent lumberman David Ross who settled there. Ross rafted huge quantities of logs and lumber down the Susquehanna River each spring to the Chesapeake Bay. Samuel Murdock, an early settler from Connecticut who arrived in 1812, was elected as Vestal's first supervisor when the town was established in 1823. Tracy Creek, formerly Randall's Creek flows through the small hamlet of Ross Corners."

"Sections of the Chenango Canal Extension were planned to cross through Ross Corners on a westward path to Athens Pennsylvania. Unfinished and abandoned by 1870, the D.L.&W Railroad tracks took a similar path through the hamlet."

"Each spring plow blades turned up Native American artifacts in the Castle Gardens area along the river. Archeologists conducted extensive investigations that a five thousand year old camp, the Castle Gardens site, which is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places."

"By the mid-1950s, the Castle Gardens subdivision "grew" where Native Americans once camped and farm crops flourished."

Group that erected the marker: Federal Highway Administration Metropolitan Planning Program Fund URL of a web site with more information about the history mentioned on the sign: [Web Link] Address of where the marker is located. Approximate if necessary: 1628 Castle Gardens Road Vestal, NY US 13850

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