The Saw Mill River runs straight through downtown Yonkers. For most of the last century, almost nobody saw it. Mills had used its water power since the 1600s, which is where the name comes from. Then it got sealed underground, and Yonkers parked on top of it.
How a River Ended Up Under a Parking Lot
By the early 1900s the river was a problem. It flooded, and it was dirty from the factories along its banks. Around 1920 it was boxed into a concrete channel, called a flume. The city wanted to stop the floods, cover the dirty water and make room to build. A parking lot went on top. The lot was Larkin Plaza, right by the train station.
Here is the part most people don't know. That old concrete channel is still down there. Engineers left it in place, and it now carries the extra water when a big storm hits. Past the park, the river slips back underground near the train station on its way to the Hudson.
Tearing Up the Lot
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said back in the 1990s that the river could be opened up again. Work finally started in 2010. Crews ripped out the parking lot and cut open the flume. They dug a brand new riverbed beside it and filled it with stones and boulders.
There was a catch. The ground had soaked up decades of factory pollution. So the new channel was lined with a heavy plastic sheet to keep that dirt out of the water. In late 2011, the river ran in the open again for the first time in about 90 years.
A Parking Lot Becomes a Park
Bringing a buried river back into the sun has a name. It's called daylighting. Van der Donck Park was finished on the old Larkin Plaza lot in 2012.
The numbers are wild for a downtown block. The project made about 14,000 square feet of new water habitat. That includes a tidal pool, where the Hudson's tide reaches in, and two freshwater pools. Where cars once sat, there are now eels and little fish like dace and darters.
The City Kept Digging
The city did not stop at one block. Under Mayor Mike Spano, the next stretch opened in 2016 at Mill Street, off Warburton Avenue. It brought back about 100 feet of river with a big open plaza. In November 2025 that spot got a new name, Many Trails Park. It honors the Lenape, Munsee and Mohican people who lived here first.
The third stretch started with a wrecking ball. In November 2014, the Mayor kicked off the work, and old empty stores on New Main Street came down. By 2018 that block was a riverside park across from City Hall.
Now Eels and Turtles Live Where Cars Parked
This is the best part of the story. American eels are born in the Sargasso Sea, a warm patch of the Atlantic Ocean far from land. The babies are tiny and see-through, so people call them glass eels. Every spring they ride the tide up the Hudson and turn into the Saw Mill. They grow up in the river and swim back to the sea years later.
The river has a man-made waterfall built like a set of concrete steps. Fish can't rest on those steps. So right next to them sits a fish ladder, a narrow ramp built so eels and river herring can climb past the falls.
All that work got noticed. In 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service held a ceremony right in Van der Donck Park. It honored Yonkers as an Urban Wildlife Refuge Partnership city. The Mayor said the project "brought once-lost fish and beavers back to the river in downtown Yonkers."
Go See It This Fall
Van der Donck Park sits right next to the Yonkers train station. It's a free public park. You can walk the water from the station up toward Mill Street, and October is a great time to do it. The baby eels show up in spring, so come back then if you want to look for them. On a sunny day, check the rocks at Larkin Plaza. Turtles like to sit out there and warm up.
And if you ever parked in that old lot, tell us. We want to hear it.
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