Kissena Creek

Kissena Creek, also known historically as Mill Creek, is a buried stream located in the neighborhood of Flushing in the New York City borough of Queens. Most of it flows beneath Kissena Park, Kissena Corridor Park, Queens Botanical Garden, and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, where it merges with Flushing Creek. It originated in Hillcrest.

The headwaters of Kissena Creek were in a marsh located in the present-day neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills. In the late 19th century, it served as a source for peat, a fossil fuel related to coal that forms from decayed plant matter. As Kew Gardens Hills gradually developed, the swamp shrunk in size with the street grid resting on top of it. The last holdout was a 23-acre parcel where the Opal Apartments and Lander College for Men now stand.

Leaving the swamp, Kissena Creek flowed in a northeasterly direction through Fresh Meadows towards Utopia Parkway. One reminder of the stream's presence is the two-block Aguilar Avenue, a colonial-period curved path that detoured around the swamp. At Utopia Parkway, the stream was joined by a tributary flowing north from the present-day site of Utopia Playground, which had a kettle pond until 1941. The pond was located at the junction of Fresh Meadow Lane and 73rd Avenue, which was known as Black Stump Road. The ancient name is a reminder of a time when local property owners marked their boundaries with burned out remains of tree stumps.

Located at the northwestern corner of Kissena Park, Kissena Lake was once fed by the creek and a smaller stream from the north that has since been buried with a playground built on top. In its center is a bird sanctuary isle constructed following the lake’s most recent restoration in 2003. The lake was used as an ice skating and ice harvesting site for much of the 19th century. Its use as a recreational site led the city to purchase land around it for a park in 1906.

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