Saugerties is on one of the widest parts of the upper Hudson River. The estuary delta of the Esopus outlet on the west lies diagonally opposite the estuary delta of the Stony Creek's into Tivoli Bays on the east. This part of the river was always a busy place for harvesting the rich fisheries that the Esopus and Stony deltas nourished, from the prehistoric through colonial times. In the days of sail it was equally busy with cargo boats that used its width to maneuver into and out of the turnpike terminals on the shores; from Kipp's to Hoffman's on the east to Flatbush and Glasco on the west.

The tidewater wharfage for the earliest village of Saugerties was a mile into the Esopus outlet from the Hudson channel. This was on the north side of the Esopus at the base of Myndrese Hill and around the corner at the base of Dock Street. When Henry Barclay began his development after 1825 it was all on the south side of the creek. Barclay promoted the tidewater access of his mill sites in 1826 at a fourteen foot drought. From the documents of merchants that used the Esopus before Barclay a much shallower drought then fourteen feet was recorded, in the neighborhood of six. The outlet of the Esopus naturally accumulates silt in its channel and builds it up nearly to the middle of the river.

There has always been considerable silting from both the Esopus and the Stony. At Tivoli Bays the 1840's construction of the Hudson River Railroad bulwarks across the bays cut off the direct outlet of the Stony and the silt filled the deep water of North Bay in less than a decade.

Since Barclay needed to have a deep water harbor to bring in the supplies and equipment for making the mills it can be assumed that dredging the deep channel he promised was one of the engineering projects of primary importance in his plans for the development of Saugerties.

All of Barclay's plans involved controlling water. In every case he did this with the available rock of his land, either channeling through it or cutting and building with it.

The structure of the holding wall for Barclay's canal, still clearly visible, is what the mass of the diversion dam was he built twenty feet high across the falls of the Esopus. His plans for the structures that formed the quays at the base for the mills were the same.

Today a level area, all fill, stretches east between two rock outcrops, one running to the Esopus right at the mill sites and the other one east nearer the river that extends its steep rocky sides out toward the Esopus channel in a course that continues in a line to surface as Glunt and Rock Islands on the north side, in the river.

A stone bulkhead was laid between these two massive outcrops from the base of East Bridge Street to the tip of the easterly most solid ground and behind it in what was once tide-filled marsh was placed the dredges of the channel to a height well above the threat of the highest tide or flood. This rock retaining wall was strategically placed on the outside curve so the Esopus' current would continually flush the depth there dredged and keep the channel clear and deep. That engineering was successful. On river charts today this corner is marked at a depth of 26 feet due to that continuous scouring.

The general lay of the land along the south shore indicates that the site of the quarrying for the stone used in these structures was in the area of the old ferry slip at the base of East Bridge Street. Some cutting at the outcrop there is still clearly visible. That formation likely stretched out to more then twice what remains there today.

All of the dredged material was used to create the level land on which Henry Barclay planned his storehouse and shipbuilding operations. Ferry Street running out to what was called the "buoy" is assumed to be the area that in 1826 Barclay was promoting as an ideal location for shipbuilding while his paper and iron mills were being built. His idea for shipbuilding at the head of the Esopus harbor where there is the most direct access to the river makes sense.

In 1875 Leon Barritt, Saugerties' most imaginative citizen of the time, took this access one step further and did soundings of the shoals all the way out into the middle of the river from the other side of the "buoy", suggesting extending Ferry Street. He created a map, interviewed all the parties with an interest in commerce and published his proposal for building a pier and depot south of the Esopus outlet at the edge of the Hudson shipping channel as the next generation of river front improvements to Saugerties. That eventually led to the Saugerties Pier Bill in the New York Legislature and the construction of the Long Dock under the Saugerties Long Dock and Improvement Company in 1876. By 1877 and 78 the Long Dock made Saugerties a major transit center for rail-based cargo and passengers ferried from Tivoli. It also offered quick transfer of passengers and cargo from river steamboats. It promoted Saugerties' coaches as more competitive then Kingston and Catskill transportation for carrying vacationers to the great Mountain Houses.

This was essentially the beginning of Saugerties' visibility as a tourist destination and gateway community. At the same time the Long Dock was opening for business, John and James Kiersted were opening their newly rebuilt Overlook Mountain House on the mountain closest to, and clearly visible from, the Saugerties' Long Dock depot.

With the construction of the Long Dock, storehouses began to populate the south shoreline of the Esopus. Whereas Saugerties harbor had been limited to traffic related to the mills and shipping out manufactured products before, now, with more rapid transfers from the riverfront's Long Dock, freight forwarding became an everyday part of the Saugerties waterfront. Materials by ferry and steamboat to Saugerties had quicker access to the inland markets and this in turn sparked new ventures in the village such as insurance, banking and small businesses that thrived on low shipping costs and quick access to markets. It is these businesses that set the mercantile theme in the documentation for Saugerties' Main and Partition Streets National Register Historic District.

That augments perfectly the theme of the Esopus waterfront's attraction to marinas of the past half century. In the survey done in 1988 by New York State documenting significant sites of the early industrial historic zoning overlay of the Village there were five structures related to the working waterfront left from this period of Saugerties history. Since 2000 the village board has permitted two of its five examples, The Barclay House/Christie Huber Hotel and the Ulster Lead Company storehouse, to be demolished over the objection of its Historic Review Board.

The Barclay House functioned in the days of the mills as a tavern and rest facility for the waterfront workers. It developed the same bad reputation that followed all waterfront establishments of the day but, in essence, was simply a tavern that functioned as the neighborhood restroom, something that had to exist. The basement efficiently and hygienically supported this restroom function with a spring that continuously ran through it washing all waste into the harbor. When the demolition was done it collapsed and pressed the brick walls into the basement cavity, blocking this water flow and pressure on the sewers produced gushers that burst out of the holes of manhole covers up Mill street. The system had to be rebuilt soon after to carry the added volume and then a few years later when another functional part of the original sewers immediately adjacent to it was given a permit to build a house on top that construction collapsed an early civil works cistern.

Shortly after the Barclay House was allowed to be demolished the owner of what was called the “coal barn” was allowed to dismantle it to sell it as decorative barn siding. This structure was Battelle and Renwick's storehouse for their Ulster White Lead Company but it also was used to shelter other products transported on their steamboat Ansonia. This was part of a wharf complex related to the Saugerties Transportation Company at the base of East Bridge Street that also included a large building with offices and a waiting area for passengers boarding the Ansonia that is pictured in every photograph of the famous Hudson River side wheeler steamboats of Saugerties.

The boats and their wharf structures are gone but fortunately four other extraordinary structures that relate to this once bustling work-a-day life on the steamboat landings remain. The first is the Ferry Depot at the end of the Long Dock. This was surveyed as a significant structure of the town in 2004.

The Long Dock is part of the town because it was allowed by the state under the Saugerties Pier Act of 1876 to be part of the town as new land in the river. It was originally meant to be the property of the town, like a bridge, but the town government backed away from its agreement to build it and instead the State granted it in a patent to J. B. Sheffield provided its function was completed within five years. That was finished by the business consortium responsible for its construction.

The Long Dock is made up of Ferry Street in the village extended to the edge of “Schoonmaker's flats” which is part of the original Henry Barclay lands and then a Ferry Street continuation into the middle of the river within the town that is the made-land under the Pier Act that followed the title of the Saugerties Long Dock Company. The ferry depot and ferry slip are at the end of the Long Dock and Ferry Street.

The Long Dock's ownership begins with the referee sale of the public/private Saugerties Long Dock and Improvement Co. to its previous board of W. R. Sheffield, J. W. Davis, Henry Turck and G. R. Spaulding who then owned it privately as the Saugerties Long Dock Company.

Numerous newspaper articles of the period follow this progression of events and make a good study of the contrast between progressive, entrepreneurial post Civil War thinking and that of more conservative business interests. The key protagonist, William Renwick, the owner of the Ansonia with its exclusive docking arrangements at the wharves of his Ulster White Lead Company, had the most to lose from every boat on the river stopping at the Long Dock.

Today, the Long Dock and Ferry Depot, along with the Saugerties Lighthouse and the buildup of the dredging spoils from a hundred and fifty years of continuous use of the shipping channel to Saugerties' mills highlight the Esopus Shoals as the most visually distinctive man-made element of any map that can be found.

The three structures that are within the village of Saugerties do a magnificent job of representing Saugerties' historic use of its waterfront. These are a pair of brick storehouses that the NYS Historic Preservation office cites as the last remaining steamboat storehouses left on the Hudson River; and, the Sheffield Bindery which was fully restored and made into senior housing in the late 1990's.

The storehouses appear to have been both built at the same time. On the 1904 Sanborn Insurance map they’re designated the property of the Saugerties and New York Steamboat Company. They are not represented on any of the earliest maps that show the buildings of the waterfront and they are not represented on the 1881 birdseye panorama picturing the waterfront. They are in the background on a photograph from 1903 of the burned and sunken steamboat "Saugerties" and in a photo taken from the stone docks of the same period looking very much as they do today. On a photograph from the top of the hill taken around 1905 there can be seen many more structures similar to them, including the brick O. T. Simmons Saw Mill to their east near the Saugerties Gas Light Company generation plant. Both are long gone.

The warehouses are in very good condition for being nearly 125 years old and functioning in a working setting for all those years. It is surmised that there is a solidity of the rock base under this surviving pair that has kept their foundations more secure then at locations further up the channel and this has stabilized their walls.

Up East Bridge Street from the Esopus harbor and the wharves is the Sheffield Bindery, the only intact mill building remaining in Saugerties zoned historic overlay in the early industrial district. At the height of Saugerties' water power-based industry the entire shoreline from the dam to the steamboat wharves was one continuous mill complex. Beginning at the old Iron Works every process used in the manufacture of paper products, from raw material to end product, was represented in their order of manufacture. At the old Iron Mill site was the Barclay Fibre Co. mill. This used the brand new process of converting wood to paper pulp. Next in line was the Sheffield Paper Company that used a percentage of this wood pulp together with its traditional rag pulp in the machines that produced rolls of paper using the same process Henry Barclay introduced in America for the first time in 1826. Then a portion of the Sheffield mill's production went up to the newest building, the Saugerties Manufacturing Company, to become bound books and envelopes.

The position of the bindery, built up East Bridge Street without its own wharf, represents a change that would affect the entire waterfront in later years. It was built at the same time the West Shore Railroad began operations. With that the transportation benefits of being on tidewater didn't matter any more.

Even the water power benefits of the Esopus in Saugerties were being subverted. By 1903 the bindery still used water power but the Cantine Mill, built at the same time, began using its water rights to generate electricity for its machinery.

So it can be said that the advantages of Saugerties' water resources became history with the building of the bindery.

The wharves of Saugerties that had been built to attract ship building had grown into a support function for the mills and all the other business enterprises of the larger region, including the resorts and boarding houses of the countryside. Until the late 1830’s all traffic in the harbor was sail but the deepening of the channel for the mills made Saugerties a profitable stop for the steamboats. In 1851 when the Hudson River Railroad came to Tivoli ferries that brought steamboat passengers and cargo from the warehouses there returned to the importance they held before dikes and navigation aids brought the steamboats directly into the Esopus channel making Saugerties harbor a home port. When the Long Dock was finished in 1877 to shorten the ferry distance to the Tivoli trains and support a direct stop for steamboats competing with the railroad for customers it again made Saugerties a focus of all transportation routes of the day. In 1884 when the West Shore Railroad opened operations with depots at Mount Marion, Saugerties, Malden and West Camp this eliminated the Saugerties harbor as the central location for all freight and passenger business, though the Long Dock's link to the Hudson River Railroad remained important as a transfer point between the railroads until 1889 when the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge began to eliminate this advantage too.

With the railroad, steamboats in general were used less for freight and new storehouses in Saugerties began to be built at the tracks on the village's newly annexed west side, over a mile from the river. Even William Renwick found it more practical to ship white lead from the Mount Marion West Shore freight depot and lost interest in harassing the Long Dock Company. After the West Shore Railroad arrived he sold his Saugerties Transportation Company to Robert A. Snyder to become the Saugerties and New York Steamboat Company.

The waterfront kept its importance as the center of transportation in Saugerties for a while. The river continued to represent the more comfortable way to travel and Saugerties continued to be an attractive destination for the tour boats. But for vacationing travelers the scenic approach to the inner harbor of Saugerties was more appealing then being dropped off in the middle of the river. So, within twenty years of its construction, the Long Dock fell into disuse and wharf structures built based on its business followed it in decline.