Dear OC List, One additional entry I just read the other day regarding the "drowned lands," came from "The Concise History of Orange County" by Ref A. E. Corning, Hope Farm Press & Bookshop, Saugerties, NY, 1993. It states "The text of this book is a reprint of a section of Southereastern New York originally published by Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., in 1946. It has been completely redesigned and typeset with a new Index" (index created by Richard Frisbie). Chapter One is on Topography and mentions this area as follows: "Perhaps the richest soil in the county is to be found in the swampy tracts...Onions and celery are the usual crops. There is said to be around forty thousand acres of swamp land in Orange County. The most extensive of these areas is the Drowned Lands in the towns of Warwick, Greenville, Minisink, Waywayanda and Goshen, covering 17 thousand acres. In the middle quarter quarter oft eh nineteenth century this entire area was immersed under several feet of water held in by a natural dam...Cutting through the dam reclaimed the land. Greycourt meadows, covering 500 acres...extends from Craigsville to Chester. This land was so productive that in the session of the Legislature during the winter of 1799, a resolution was passed relative to draining and improving Beaver Dam meadow in the town of New Windsor. At that time it was called the "Wild Meadows." "We find that 40 types of soil are mapped in Orange County, and that they conform closely to the characteristics of the rocks from which they are derived by glaciation."