Brown's Station
From Eliafamily
Brown's Station, New York was a village located in the Esopus Valley in southeastern Ulster County, New York. It is now known as Shokan.
Town History
Brown's Station was the easternmost village in the town of Olive, New York, and was named after Alfred Brown, who owned and tended to the Brown Farm House that was in the village.
In the village, there were farms, boarding houses, stores, and even a telegraph office. It was a popular tourist spot. Plenty of people would come from many different areas, especially New York City, to take time off and relax. There were two streams that went through the town; the Esopus Creek and the Beaverkill Creek, which flowed into the Esopus at the end of the village. Tourists and summer/weekend boarders would come to this town to swim in the creeks, along with other activities such as tubing, boating and fishing.
The town was served by the Ulster and Delaware Railroad, which had a railroad depot in the town. The depot was also called Brown's Station, and was one of the busiest depots in the Esopus Valley. It was where several carloads of cement were dropped off for the construction of the Ashokan Reservoir.
The City of New York had been surveying many places to put a reservoir. They had already impounded part of the Croton River and most of its subsidaries. But they needed more water, and they eventually decided to flood the Esopus Valley. They started building the dam in 1906, and were using Rosendale Cement, the strongest at the time. The cement was dropped off at Brown's Station. When they finished in 1912, they started flooding the valley, and the buildings were either moved or abandoned. The reservoir was completely filled in 1915, and Brown's Station was but a memory.
Elias In Brown Station
The Elia family moved to Brown Station in 1907 to take advantage of the plentiful need for labor there. The reservoir was being built at the time, and the railroad passed through the town. Three Elias would be born in Brown Station: Charlie, Rose, and Mary. It was also the site of a near-tragedy: Maria and Nicola's house burned to the ground, but the entire family managed to get out safely.
