Nature Notes: The Mighty Pipsqueak
Little Northwest Creek is, indeed, little and in the extreme northwest corner of East Hampton Town. It serves as part of the border between the town and the Village of Sag Harbor. The stream itself is 10 feet at it widest, but the wetlands on either side of it are substantial and in terms of area coverage rival the wetlands on the creek’s much bigger neighbor to the east, Northwest Creek.
The creek is fed by two groundwater streams, which are fresh until they approach the main creek bed and then are brackish as they become tidal. The two groundwater streams that fork off from the creek are both called Rattlesnake Creek on local maps. One of them originates just west of Route 114, under which it flows northeasterly then northerly where it crosses just north of Swamp Road.
No rattlesnakes have been found in the creek’s proximity in the last 150 years or so, but there once were timber rattlesnakes on Long Island and they were on the East End, including the South Fork. Naturalists still search for them, but to no avail. A beaver dam in western Southampton Town doesn’t have any beavers, and Otter Pond in Sag Harbor, no otters. It is quite possible, even probable, that rattlesnakes once slithered along the banks of their namesake creek.
The hydrography of the area immediately to the east of Sag Harbor is quite interesting. First there is Little Northwest Creek, then a series of semi-isolated wetlands, and finally a pond along Barcelona’s western edge. Round Barcelona and you confront Northwest Creek, beyond which is a sedgy wetland that reaches all the way to Mile Hill Road on the east and Phoebe Scoys Road on the south. Barcelona itself is a giant hunk of retreatal moraine left in a mound as the glacier that formed the South Fork melted back to the north.
Little Northwest Creek and its two tributaries are very rich botanically and have been the home to some interesting fauna, namely red-bellied and spotted turtles, ninespine sticklebacks, and southern leopard frogs. One can still find teal and diamondback terrapin plying its waters to this day. Its outer shoal is a favorite for egg-laying horseshoe crabs come full and new moon tides in early May. Troublesome thick stands of phragmites flank it. It is very shallow and its mucky bed is not much good for clams, scallops, and oysters, but it abounds with small fishes, namely spearing and killifishes during the warmer months. Elvers from the Sargasso Sea make their way up the creek each spring, but there are not ponds where they can grow up at the creek’s end.
The narrowness of the creek made it easy to span and so the first major road from Sag Harbor to East Hampton crossed it by way of a little bridge to Russell’s Neck, the remnants of which still exist. Timothy Dwight, one of the first presidents of Yale University crossed it in the first years of the 1800s in his discovering-Long-Island trip, about which he wrote a book.
The most fascinating thing about the creek is how it oxbows its way here and there in a tortuous journey to the mouth, where it meets Northwest Harbor. The inlet is forever changing in location depending on a small barrier beach that accumulates between the creek at its end and the harbor. At times the stream will parallel this low barrier and run 50 or 60 feet due west before it enters the harbor. Then there are times when it is running high, say after flood rains or very high tides, and it punches straight through the barrier directly into the harbor.
It’s a tiny system but a very important one. New York State purchased the west side of the system early on, and the east side when it purchased the bulk of Barcelona. The Town of East Hampton bought two undeveloped parcels in the headwater region of the easternmost branch of Rattlesnake Creek. Put that together with Suffolk County’s much earlier purchase of most the lands on either side of Northwest Creek and the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s purchase of the wetlands west of Mile Hill Road and you have pieced together one of the great natural treasures of the South Fork and a major tributary system to the Peconic Estuary.
It was all done before the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation tax began pumping money into the coffers of the five East End towns to make such purchases and set-asides of open spaces a great deal easier. Yes, Little Northwest Creek is a pipsqueak of a wetland-tidal stream system, but it is mighty in its contribution to the entire Northwest Woods open space system. Kudos to the many local folk, environmental groups, and the many levels of government that brought such a fanciful vision to full fruition.
Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].