Before Native Americans or Europeans settled in the Troy area, it was a river plain filled with oak and yellow (Pitch) pine, probably similar to Albany’s Pine Bush.

The pine barrens environment was extensive in the Capital District and part of a larger sand belt that extended up to Warren County. Eventually it became known as Corn Ground planted by Mohicans who lived here before the Dutch settled. Part of it was known as the “Great Meadow” when Jan Barentsen Wemp purchased it earlier from the Mohawks in 1659 (the Mohicans were displaced in 1628).

It wasn’t long before “The Groves of Oaks and Pines, which covered a large Part of its Site at the Beginning of the Decade, had been mostly cleared Away,” according to John Woodward in 1785.

In 1819 the Troy Lyceum appointed Prof. Amos Eaton and Dr. George Marvin to a committee to make a list of the wild plants growing in Troy and its vicinity. This list comprised 774 species. Amos Eaton published the first popular descriptive botany Manuel for North America in 1817 before he started RPI in Troy.

On March 17th, 1832, H. Hulbert Eaton, Assistant Professor of Chemistry in the medical department of Transylvanian university published a “Description........

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