For many centuries, the waters of a creek now called Realls mingled with the mighty currents of a river now called Mohawk at a place where grew a city now called Utica.

The creek flowed south from the foothills of the Adirondacks, zigzagging through thousands of acres of forests and fields for many miles until it reached places now called Deerfield and North Utica.

From there, its waters traveled south for another mile or so until it reached the Mohawk River.

The creek — named for Christian Realls who, in 1773, had built a log house in Deerfield — exists today, but no longer flows into the Mohawk. Today, it runs along the west side of North Genesee Street, turns east and crosses under Genesee Street not-too-many yards south of Herkimer Road, then turns south again until it empties into the nearby Barge Canal.

When Realls Creek did empty into the Mohawk River, though, the river was located several hundred yards south of its present location. For thousands of centuries until the early l900s, the river approached Utica from the west and turned abruptly southeast until it reached the area of today's Bagg's Square. From there it turned just as abruptly north­east until it straightened out and headed east toward Frank-fort.

What resulted was a river bed shaped like a giant horseshoe as it passed through Utica.

The spot where Realls Creek flowed into the Mohawk River was about 1,500 feet northeast of where the city's Union Station on Main Street is today. (The horseshoe bend was straightened and the river relocated north to its present location in the early 1900s to make more room for tracks for the fast-growing New York Central Railroad and its large, modern depot.)

For many years before settlers reached the Upper Mohawk Valley, the place where Realls Creek flowed into the Mohawk River was the most popular — and busiest — place in the region. All trails — for Indians, trappers, bears, wolves, deer, rabbits and ground hogs among others — led there because there the Mohawk River (much larger and with more rapid waters in those days than today) was not very wide or deep.

It was one of the few places in the river where the waters were so shallow that man and beast could wade across and head to territories to the north or south. That great fording place in the Mohawk River attracted the Brit­ish in the l750s.

The French and Indian War was raging and the British needed a small fort to store supplies and provide a resting place for westbound soldiers on their way from New England and Albany to Fort Stanwix (where the city of Rome is today). What better place for such a fort than at the ford in the river 15 miles east of Fort Stanwix?

The British built their small fort and named it Fort Schuyler for Colonel Peter Schuyler, one of their heroic fighting officers.

After the French and Indian War ended, both Fort Stanwix and Fort Schuyler fell into ruin.

When the Revolutionary War began in 1775, General George Washington, realizing that the strategic Upper Mohawk Valley was not well protected, ordered Fort Stanwix rebuilt and fortified. It was and was renamed Fort Schuyler in honor of General Philip Schuyler, who was Colonel Peter Schuyler's nephew and one of the American Continentals Army's most respected generals.

When Fort Stanwix was renamed Fort Schuyler, the smaller fort 15 miles to the east became known as “Old Fort Schuyler.”

After the War for Independence ended in 1783, the fording place in the Mohawk River at Old Fort Schuyler began to attract more and more settlers. The small community there began to grow. Inns, taverns and a variety of stores grocery, dry goods, etc. were built to accommodate eastbound and westbound travelers. They found the ford a convenient place to cross the Mohawk River on their way north to the Adirondacks or south to settlements in Southern and Western New York.

In 1798, Old Fort Schuyler was incorporated as a village and changed its name to Utica. In 1832, the village of Utica became the city of Utica.

And, it all happened because of a creek called Realls.

For you see, the reason the Mohawk River was so narrow and shallow at the place where Utica grew was because of a large sandbar in the river there — a sandbar fed and fattened through the centuries by sediment from the Adirondacks.

And how did that sediment get from the Adirondacks to the Mohawk River to create that large sandbar and fording place?

For thousands of years, silt and sand at the bottom of snow-capped peaks in the Adirondacks had been picked up by the waters of a little creek, carried south through acres and acres of forests and fields and finally laid down in the Mohawk River.

The little creek that had carried tons and tons of silt and sand south to the Mohawk River and had created a fording place there was Realls Creek.