The Saw Kill is a tributary of the Hudson River, called the Metambesem by the Algonquin people of the area and sometimes called Sawkill Creek today. It rises in the town of Milan and drains a area of northwestern Dutchess County, New York, that includes most of the town of Red Hook to the west and part of Rhinebeck to Red Hook's south. It flows predominantly through forests and farmland. Just above its mouth, it descends more steeply through a wooded area with several waterfalls into South Tivoli Bay, between the Montgomery Place estate and Bard College, which uses the stream as both its primary water source and for disposal of its treated wastewater. In the 1840s, the owners of those properties made an agreement to prevent development along the stream, one of the earliest such conservation measures in American history. Course The Saw Kill at first descends rapidly through the hills in Milan and eastern Red Hook where it rises. As those hills level out, it then meanders slowly across the flatter, more developed areas closer to the village of Red Hook, then at Annandale-on-Hudson once again descends rapidly to its mouth. Upper stream The Saw Kill rises on the slopes of an unnamed hill, just east of Broadview Lane in the town of Milan, at an elevation of approximately above sea level. It flows southwesterly through forested land for its first half-mile (1 km), descending as it does, until it reaches a small farm pond at the edge of some cleared land and turns to the northwest as it flows out. Over its next mile (1.6 km), crossing more fields, it gradually bends southwest again until it flows under a farm road and, its uppermost crossing, and reaches another, larger farm pond roughly a thousand feet (300 m) east of Milan Hill Road (Dutchess County Route 54), having lost another in elevation. From the pond's outlet the Saw Kill flows first westerly, then turning strongly to the south southwest as it enters a wooded ravine closely paralleling Milan Hill Road for the next 1,800 feet (600 m). By the time it reaches the swampy areas where it flows under New York State Route 199 (NY 199), the uppermost public crossing of the stream, it has dropped to above sea level. Just past the highway, it bends to the west and runs roughly parallel to it. For its next