Dry Creek

 

Dry Creek. Sounds like a pretty safe place to be. Well, not always— spring rains come down, snow melts off and the creek becomes anything, but dry.

Dry Creek is the name of the stream that meanders through Fillmore Glen State Park in Moravia. The stream makes many of the beautiful spots that draw people to the park. Follow the gorge trail through the park and you are walking beside Dry Creek most of the way. Large pieces of shale line the bottom of the creek in spots. Waterfalls, both small and medium-size are abundant along the trails when the water flows plentifully. Wooden bridges meander back and forth across the stream. Hiking to the far point of the trail or driving to a parking lot nearby, you can see the dam that was created to hold the water back and form a pond that has beavers living there. You can even walk across the top of the dam to the head of the hiking trails from the end that comes down to the pond from the parking area. Yes, a lot of Dry Creek is anything, but dry.

Nearer the front of the park, a driveway dips down and fords the creek on the way to a parking lot for picnickers and hikers. Kids enjoy riding their bikes down through the water. As a kid, I nicknamed it “the bike car wash.” There is a footbridge beside it if you don’t want to get your shoes wet, but still want to cross from one side to the other. Just beyond this, the creek separates campsites from camping cabins. A bridge in the camping area carries cars and RVs to the farther side with a rumble that sounds like thunder. A great thrill to listen to especially for young children.

Upon the hill behind the campground is Dry Creek cemetery. It can most easily be reached along the trail that leads from the campground to the back playground at the nearby elementary school. This cemetery is no longer in use. It was the first burial ground for the village of Moravia. Many of the earliest settlers are buried there along with their families. There are some sad rows of stones where whole families of children are buried, some with death dates within days or weeks of each other. Obviously, with dates like this, some illness swept through this family and perhaps the village as well. Although many recovered, many apparently didn’t.

Why was the cemetery abandoned? A severe storm in August of 1863 caused flooding across the state. Dry Creek was certainly no exception and flooded. It flooded so bad that it took about an acre of soil at a depth of twenty feet that was swept away from the cemetery! Along with this dirt, sixteen coffins were swept away into the torrent of water. As they were tossed about, many of the coffins struck against branches or each other causing them to open and expose the body within; which was then swept up into the water as well. Amongst the corpses was that of Lieutenant Stoyell, a prominent citizen that was recently deceased. About half of the coffins and corpses were recovered by the next day.

After having a number of smaller floods before this massive one, the citizens of Moravia were tired of dealing with this problem. Samuel Ely Day donated land to the north of the village, high on the hill, for a new cemetery. And thus Indian Mound Cemetery was created where local citizens are buried to this day. Ironically, the first burial in the cemetery was that of Mr. Day, himself.