Putnam Valley Historical Society

As so many of us are familiar with, getting your ducks in a tidy row is never an easy task. Here’s to getting our fine feathered friends (and many other things) lined up so we can welcome visitors again! The five antique duck decoys are a recent donation from a house on Lake Oscawana.

There’s a very faint 10/64 at the bottom of the page. Could this be the origin of the mysterious bridge behind the post office parking lot??

Scanning, scanning, scanning away...in a small, unassuming folder labeled "Miscellaneous 1915, 16, 17" and you guys!! Look at this picture. Does it look familiar? Maybe like...something's missing? Like...the Bear Mountain Bridge? It's not Putnam Valley, but it's too cool not to share. It appears to have been taken from the general area of Fort Montgomery looking towards Anthony's Nose and the intersection of Route 9D & Bear Mountain Bridge Road/202 (the Goat Trail for you locals) in either 1915, 1916, or 1917. The BMB was built in 1923. Photo from the collection of 2,000+ photos taken by one Mr. Harry Youngling, part-time (summer) resident of Lake Oscawana in the early 1900s. Putnam Historian Putnam History Museum

Some of the best snowy winter pictures in our collection are not actually from Putnam Valley. They were taken in Peekskill, very few are labeled, and we think the folks in them definitely had ties to Putnam Valley as other pictures in the collection are definitely from the Valley. Regardless - I bet they really DID have to walk up hill in the snow to get to school after this storm!

You never know what you’ll find (in your attic, behind the walls, in an outbuilding, buried in the yard, etc) if you have an older house!