The word “Kill” was first used locally by the Dutch settlers of the Hudson Valley as a noun meaning a stream or creek, and later colonists continued to use the term. McCorlin’s Kill is a small tributary of the Wallkill River east of Scotchtown with a name as Scottish as the settlers who lived near its banks. According to an early tradition, “The name is from a man who lived upon it many years since,” but later historians believed McCorlin was a mythical person. [1] We do know Moses Bull Jr. resided on a farm along McCorlin’s Kill directly east of the Scotchtown Church from 1795 till his death in 1848. Harvey Roe owned the property by 1881, and operated a sawmill there. [2] Other individuals also harnessed the Kill’s waterpower. In 1846, Asa Hasbrouck had a sawmill farther downstream, where the creek crossed the Montgomery Turnpike (what is now Route 211). [3] About halfway between Hasbrouck’s sawmill and the Wallkill River, the McNeal family operated the first gristmill in the Town of Wallkill as early as 1760. [4] This mill continued to exist for more than a century and appears on an 1875 map of the town near what is now Stony Ford Road. [5] McCorlin’s Kill, beginning as a small stream in the Town of Crawford, still flows south through Highland Lakes State Park along the eastern base of Three Mile Hill, eventually emptying into the Wallkill River. The upstream portion of the Kill that is within the park is classified by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation as a “Class B” stream. From just north of Route 211 to the Wallkill, the Kill is considered Class C.

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