The Bronx River has been an important part of the Bronx, Westchester, and the Hudson Valley for time immemorial. In the days when America had never been seen by Europeans, the local Mohican Indian tribes lived off the river. Calling it Aquehung, or River of High Bluffs, the Mohicans fished in and drank from the river.In 1639, a Swede named Jonas Bronck bought a 500-acre tract of land comprising the area of the Bronx below 150th Street. This tract included the river, which took on the name Jonas Bronck's River. This was later shortened to just "the Bronx River." In 1914, when the Bronx became a borough of New York, it got its name from the Bronx River.
During the 1700s and 1800s, the Bronx River became what was termed a "working river," powering a total of twelve mills, including the Snuff Mill located in the New York Botanical Gardens. A railroad line grew up along the river to carry people and products, and as time went on, other less clean factories grew up. Since there were few laws concerning dumping, these factories joined several municipal sewage systems and deposited their waste in the river.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the southern parts of the Bronx sank into urban blight and the river got worse and worse. Once used for drinking water, it had become so polluted an alderman once referred to it as an open sewer. As the Bronx grew poorer, the contamination got worse. People began using the river as their personal junkyard, and threw in everything from household trash to motor oil cans and cars.
In 1974, the local community stepped in to save the river. Concerned citizens founded the Bronx River Restoration Project, an organization devoted to cleaning up the river and revitalizing the surrounding areas. They got a big boost in 1995, when the Phipps Community Development Center got a two-acre tract of land along the river on the south side of East Tremont Ave. Phipps turned it into a small garden.
Now, the Bronx River Restoration, renamed as the Bronx River Alliance, is making major progress in cleaning up both the river and the surrounding neighborhoods. Drew Gardens, the little two-acre park, has become home to a wide variety of ecological workshops for children. What's more, the Bronx River Arts Center, located across the street from Drew Gardens, has joined the cause. The center, which already ran a host of afterschool art programs, developed five new ecologically oriented classes. The Bronx River greenway, a new and emerging project which may help clean up both the river and the South Bronx, has brought national attention to the cleanup project.
