Author: Local Ecologist Michael Gaige, https://www.knowyourland.com/
Lore around Snake Hill’s namesake draws on a foreboding label to scare away settlers, or the landform forming a snake-like head when traced along the shoreline. The toponym was used as a name for property’s 19th-century settlement, Snake Hill Farm, owned by John and Amanda Hart. But surveyors labeled the site Snake Point in the Kayaderosseras Patent survey of 1771 (Carpenter 1964). In the 20th century, the name was given geological attribution with the widespread Snake Hill Formation. But what snakes lived here? When? And where did they go?
In his remarkable book, Timber Rattlesnakes in Vermont and New York: Biology, History, and the Fate of an Endangered Species (2007), Jon Furman recounts the incomplete understanding of Crotalus horridus at Snake Hill, and thus all of Saratoga County, as this was the only known location for the species. Furman speculated about possible bounties on rattlesnakes by the Town of Stillwater (none have been identified) in the mid-1800s, writing:
[…] there may well have been a local timber rattlesnake bounty in the town of Stillwater at that time. This could at least partly explain the extirpation of the county’s only rattlesnake den by sometime in the mid-1800s. The den was located in Stillwater, on Snake Hill, above the eastern shore of Saratoga Lake. (p. 85)
William L. Stone, writing in Harper’s Magazine in 1876, briefly described the site and its name:
[Snake Hill], which has of late years become so familiarly known as the starting point of the intercollegiate regattas, has formed the frame-work of a Revolutionary romance from the pen of the late Daniel Shepherd of Saratoga. The name was given to it by the early settlers in consequence of a formidable den of rattlesnakes that formerly existed half-way up its side.
Describing the life and fate of a local Snake Hill—and timber rattlesnake—devotee living near the site in the 1820s, Stone wrote:
[O]ne evening, arriving at the Springs with a pair of these amiable playthings in a box, and having disregarded the principles of the temperance society, he heedlessly took them out of the box to show their docility. Not perhaps liking the familiarity of a tipsy keeper, one of them bit him in the hand and his death ensued the following day.
In an earlier volume, Reminisces of Saratoga and Ballston, also by William Stone, some attribution is given for the demise of Snake Hill’s timber rattlesnakes. Stone, describing settlers on Saratoga Lake’s east side, wrote:
To these two families, the Arnolds and Clements, is due the final extermination of the venomous reptiles from which Snake Hill takes its name. One of the first exploits of John Arnold and Peter Clement after arriving at Snake Hill was to assemble a “Rattlesnake Bee”; and for one week the crops and all farm-work were left in abeyance until, after a thorough and most destructive campaign, there was, comparatively, not a rattlesnake left. St. Patrick himself did not demoralize the snakes in Ireland more completely!
In the 1870s C. B. Moon, of Moon’s Lakehouse, offered tour boat rides on his Silver Moon steamer, which included a stop at Snake Hill to “view the CAVE ON SNAKE HILL” (Daily Saratogian 1875). The cave was noted to contain “bushels” of snake bones.
Timber rattlesnakes inhabit winter dens among slopes of loose rocks or crevices deep enough to protect them from winter’s cold. There is no location on Snake Hill today that might form a timber rattlesnake den. However, snakes are much better at finding these features than humans. It’s likely that the hibernacula occurred at what is now an abandoned rock quarry on Snake Hill’s east side. The exact situation will forever remain elusive.
Timber rattlesnakes migrate from their winter den—where dozens to perhaps a hundred or more congregate—to their individual summer territories at a distance up to three miles. They summer in these locations before returning to the den by winter. From Snake Hill, timber rattlesnakes could have migrated as far as what is now the north end of Saratoga Lake, east nearly to the Saratoga Battlefield, and south to what is now Global Foundries. As fine swimmers, snakes may also have crossed the Lake.
Timber rattlesnakes are generally reclusive and non-aggressive. In the few times I’ve stumbled upon one, they appropriately rattle their tail to provide fair warning, and our encounter ends amiably. Timber rattlesnakes are threatened in New York State. The nearest populations occur in Warren and Washington counties. Saratoga Lake’s east side is now too fragmented and densely settled for timber rattlesnakes, but the protection of Snake Hill offers refuge for a wide variety of plants and other animals. For now, the site’s name carries the ecological legacy of their prior presence in Saratoga County.
References:
Carpenter Jr., C. Donald. 1964. Introduction to the Great Lot Maps of the Kayaderosseras Patent. November 1964. Survey maps on file at Saratoga County land records room.
Daily Saratogian. Various years. News articles accessed via NYS Historic Newspapers: https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/
Furman, Jon. 2008. Timber Rattlesnakes of Vermont and New York: Biology, History and the Fate of an Endangered Species. University Press of New England.
Stone, William, L. 1875. Reminiscences of Saratoga and Ballston. Virtue and Yorston. https://www.loc.gov/item/01014987/
Stone, William L. 1876. Saratoga Springs. Harpers New Monthly Magazine, LIII (November 1876): 385–399. Harper and Brothers.
Photo courtesy of The New York Public Library