Henry Hudson Springs

Overview

Along Bayside Drive is the spring which Lenape Indians showed to Henry Hudson when he anchored here in September 1609 and where he filled the water casks of the "Half Mood." For several centuries, ships heading out to sea filled their water barrels at this "spout." It served both side in the Revolutionary and 1812 wars. In the 1830s, the owner of the Spout House, Louis Despreaux, laid a pipeline to the shore and sold spring water at five cents a barrel to fishing vessels, especially the New England Fishing Fleet, numbering up to 300 ships.

In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration built a wall of native peanut stone on the cliff where the spring emerges, as well as a stone bridge and causeway. It was then named "Henry Hudson Spring." After years of neglect, it was restored in 1977 by the Atlantic Highlands Historical Society, which did landscaping and installed the stone marker at the site.

Atlantic Highlands Green Map
updated 03/2012 by Trevor Brick