40 DECEMBER 23, 2021 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Exploring the history of Fresh Pond
BY THE OLD TIMER
EDITORIAL@QNS.COM
@QNS
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
Whenever you drive, walk or
ride the infamously slow Q58
bus along Fresh Pond Road,
there’s always two questions that come
to mind. The fi rst is: Why the heck
is there so much traffi c on this little
roadway?
We can’t answer that one, but we
can answer the second question: Why
do they call it Fresh Pond Road when
there isn’t anything close to resembling
a fresh pond nearby?
Believe it or not, there were fresh
ponds in the vicinity of Fresh Pond
Road at one point in time. They were
drained and developed centuries ago
into the residential and commercial
areas that we know of today.
More than that, however, Fresh Pond
Road is one of the most important and
historic roadways in all of Queens
County. Its roots date back to a time
before colonists even arrived on our
shores some 400 years ago.
Fresh Pond Road started out as an
old trail for Native Americans living
Photo via Ridgewood Times archives
in present-day Maspeth, the neighborhood
whose name is derived from the
Mespeatches tribe that once resided
there. The Mespeatches walked along
this trail from Maspeth south into
present-day Brooklyn to Jamaica Bay.
There, they fi shed and clammed, then
brought back home with them seashells
later used to make wampum, a form of
native currency.
Colonists, upon arriving in Queens
in the 1600s, continued to use the trail,
which would at one point be known
as Kill’s Path. It was given that name
because, according to legend, the road
became a site for battles among Native
American tribes.
Kill’s Path, which extended from
present-day Cypress Hills, Brooklyn
to Maspeth, would be incorporated
into the maps of the town of Newtown
(which had encompassed much of the
Greater Ridgewood area) and later into
Queens County.
The road was named Fresh Pond
Road in the 1800s to refl ect two small
ponds that once occupied an area just
to the east of the roadway and to the
north of what would become Mount
Olivet Crescent. Reiff Playground, at
this intersection, occupied part of
where one of these ponds once existed.
These ponds, fi lled with brackish runoff
from the nearby Newtown Creek, were
drained and fi lled in during the 1900s.
Fresh Pond Road, at one point, also included
the full length of what is known
today as Cypress Hills Street, which
runs from Jamaica Avenue in Cypress
An 1891 Long Island Rail Road map of the Fresh Pond LIRR station. Photo via Wikimedia Commons
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