Nearly 250 years ago, British warships moved up the Hudson to reinforce General Burgoyne in the Battles of Saratoga and fired hot cannonballs that set colonists' property ablaze, though Anthony Yelverton's home escaped and still stands as the oldest wooden structure in Ulster County. Yelverton, a Poughkeepsie native, built his hillside house partly from timbers of an old boat, started a brickyard when he needed bricks, turned his ground floor into a tavern and store as more settlers arrived, and created a ferry service across the river using slaves to man the oars. The waterfront long prospered through wharves, warehouses, icehouses, coal and lumber depots, and a foundry, but in the 1880s the West Shore Railroad cleared many buildings for its right of way and fires destroyed much of what remained. As the shoreline declined into an industrial echo, Highland's economic activity and population shifted up the hill. After the Mid-Hudson Bridge made ferry service obsolete in 1941, the waterfront gradually came to be valued more for scenic beauty and recreation, and residents helped the Town create Bob Shepard Highland Landing Park with a boat launch and deep-water dock for access to the Hudson. Remains of the Revolutionary War still surface along the riverside, where British cannonballs continue to be dug up and are displayed at the Town Hall in Highland.