A continuation of Nathan Kensinger’s Staten Island Walking series, attendees enjoyed tracing the route of Lemon Creek as it flows past landmarked houses, oyster middens, and protected woodlands.
Walkers learned about the history of oystermen in Sandy Ground who worked in the oyster industry downstream in Lemon Creek and Prince’s Bay. The walk also retraced the footsteps of acclaimed author Joseph Mexplore the lower sections of Lemon Creek’s watershed, as it flows out to Prince’s Bay. Once famous for its oysters and oystermen, the neighborhood of Prince’s Bay was a fishing grounds for Native Americans, before becoming a village of French, Dutch and English immigrants in the 1600s. It is located just downstream from Sandy Ground, the oldest continuously inhabited free Black settlement in the United States. Remnants of these historic communities still remain, and Lemon Creek is now a Staten Island Bluebelt, home to eagles, peacocks and deer.
