THE PEAT BEDS OF PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN, N. Y*
On
Wednesday, February 7, and Thursday, February 8, 1867, I examined a
series of peat beds which occupied certain depressions among a group of
hills of drift material included within the area of Prospect Park, then
in an incipient stage of construction in the City of Brooklyn, Ν. Υ.
The
highest of these hills, one near Flatbush Avenue, reached an altitude
of 185 feet above tide level. Several other neighboring hills in the
Park approached this elevation. The topography of this area was,
however, subsequently changed somewhat in the course of construction of
the Park. The entire area was originally covered with a forest growth,
which had been removed with the exception of a few trees occupying the
particular part of it in which the principal peat beds occurred, then
known as the " Old Pigeon Ground."
Most
of the neighboring depressions had bottom deposits of very impervious
clay, evidently washed down by rains from the surrounding inclines, and
over this a layer of peat in some cases still forming.
Four
of these depressions contained peat in sufficient quantity to be
regarded as " Peat Beds." Three of these occupied connecting valleys on
the south side of Ninth Street, within a few hundred feet'of Flatbush
Avenue. These were filled in several years previous to my visit " to
abate a nuisance," and Mr. Ludlam, then City Surveyor, thought that
about ten feet of earth had been thrown over them. They had been
reopened shortly before my visit in connection with the Park
construction, and the top soil was found to be only about two feet in
thickness. Under this the top layer of peat, about a foot in thickness,
was penetrated in every direction by the roots.
The surface of the peat in the several beds had an average elevation of 139 feet above tide level.
*Levison
(Wallace Goold), The Peat Beds of Prospect Park. Paper read before the
Long Island Historical Society, February 27, 1867.
