Kinderhook Creek

The Kinderhook Creek watershed is made up of the lands draining into Kinderhook Creek and some of its tributaries, including Black River, Black Brook, East Brook, West Brook, Wyomanock Creek, and Tsatsawassa (Tackawasick) Creek. (While the Valatie Kill is also a tributary of Kinderhook Creek, the lands draining into it are treated as their own watershed on this map.) The upper reaches of this watershed are in southeastern Rensselaer County; the watershed extends downstream into Columbia County to where Kinderhook Creek joins Stockport Creek just east of the Hudson River.

The Kinderhook Creek watershed drains the southern portion of the Rensselaer Plateau and a portion of the Taconic Mountains. The Rensselaer Plateau is New York State's fifth largest forest, and its higher elevation, cooler climate, and rocky poorly drained soils give it a landscape and ecology more like the Adirondacks than like the surrounding lower lands. The Plateau's extensive forests provide habitat for animals that need large areas to survive, such as bear, bobcat, coyote, fisher, and the Capital Region's only population of moose. One of the largest wetland complexes on the Rensselaer Plateau is in the Kinderhook Creek watershed at Cranberry Vly in Taborton.

The forests of the Plateau and the Taconics hold soil and contribute to the clean water flowing from the higher elevations. Many streams in the Kinderhook Creek watershed support trout, and the NYSDEC stocks trout in the Kinderhook and Tsatsawassa Creeks.

Cherry Plain State Park and the Capital District Wildlife Management Area on the Plateau contain more than 4100 acres open for swimming, boating, camping, hiking, snowshoeing, cross‐country skiing, and hunting. The Geiser Preserve and Robert Ingalls Preserve, both owned by the Rensselaer Land Trust, are also open to the public for passive outdoor recreation.