Scenic Hudson purchased this 590-acre property to conserve it for the public after land mined for clay by the Empire Brick Co. through the late 1930s gradually recovered despite decades of neglect, with clay pits becoming wetlands and forest growing around the ruins of the company's kilns. Some local residents who had helped defeat a plan to locate a landfill here in the 1980s contributed funding for Scenic Hudson's acquisition 30 years later. After removing tons of debris, Scenic Hudson opened the land for hiking, observing wildlife, hunting, and views of the Catskill, Taconic, and Berkshire mountains, and in 2018 sold it to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation to be held in trust for the public. The area is named in memory of Charles Flood, who was deeply committed to protecting the Hudson Valley's natural treasures and supporting Scenic Hudson's work, and who made a generous contribution to conserve this land as a lasting gift of love to his wife, Kristin Gamble. Around 1905, the community of workers and their families that grew up around the brickyard once contained as many as 700 people.