Hudson Valley

 

This article is about the region. For the magazine, see Hudson Valley (magazine).

The Hudson Valley

The Hudson Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in New York State, United States, from northern Westchester County northward to the cities of Albany and Troy.

Geology and physiography

The lower Hudson Valley cuts through the Appalachian zones of the eastern USA - USGS

The Hudson River valley runs more or less south to north up the eastern edge of New York State, cutting through a series of rock types including Triassic sandstones and redbeds in the south and much more ancient Precambrian gneiss in the north (and east). In the Hudson Highlands, the river enters a fjord cut during previous ice ages. To the west lie the extensive Appalachian highlands. In the Tappan Zee region, the west side of the river has high cliffs produced by an erosion-resistant diabase; these cliffs range from 400-800 feet in height.

The Hudson Valley is one physiographic section of the larger Ridge-and-Valley province, which in turn is part of the larger Appalachian physiographic division. The northern portions of the Hudson Valley fall within the Eastern Great Lakes and Hudson Lowlands Ecoregion.

During the last ice age, the valley was filled by a large glacier that pushed down as far as Long Island. Near the end of the last ice age, the Great Lakes drained south down the Hudson River, from a large glacial lake called Lake Iroquois. Lake Ontario is the remnant of that Lake. Large sand deposits remain from where Lake Iroquois drained into the Hudson; these are now part of the Rome Sand Plains.

History

The Catskills seen from across the river.

The lower Hudson River and west end of Long Island photographed from the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1993.

At the time of the arrival of the first Europeans in the 17th century, the area of Hudson Valley was inhabited primarily by the Algonquian-speaking Mahican and Munsee Native American people, known collectively as River Indians.

The first Dutch settlement was in the 1610s with the establishment of Fort Nassau, a trading post (factorij) south of modern-day Albany, with the purpose of exchanging European goods for beaver pelts. Fort Nassau was later replaced by Fort Orange. During the rest of the 17th century, the Hudson Valley formed the heart of the New Netherland colony operations, with the New Amsterdam settlement on Manhattan serving as a post for supplies and defense of the upriver operations.

During the French and Indian War in the 1750s, the northern end of the valley became the bulwark of the British defense against French invasion from Canada via Lake Champlain

The valley became one of the major regions of conflict during the American Revolution. Part of the early strategy of the British was to sever the colonies in two by maintaining control of the river.

Following the building of the Erie Canal, the area became an important industrial center. The canal opened the Hudson Valley and New York City to commerce with the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. However, in the mid 20th century, many of the industrial towns went into decline.

In the early 19th century, popularized by the stories of Washington Irving, the Hudson Valley gained a reputation as a somewhat gothic region inhabited by the remnants of the early days of the Dutch colonization of New York (see, e.g., The Legend of Sleepy Hollow). The area is associated with the Hudson River School, a group of American Romantic painters who worked from about 1830 to 1870.

The natural beauty of the Hudson Valley has earned the Hudson River the nickname "America's Rhineland", a comparison to the famous 40 mile (65 km) stretch of Germany's Rhine River valley between the cities of Bingen and Koblenz. A similar 30-mile (48 km) stretch of the east bank in Dutchess and Columbia counties has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

Hudson river pollution

The numerous factories that at one time lined the Hudson River poured garbage and industrial waste directly into the river.This pollution was not assessed in a comprehensive fashion until the 1970s. By that time, the largest company still operating factories in the area was General Electric, which became primarily responsible for cleaning the Hudson River. In 2009 dredging was started to remove contaminated sediments from the river bed and in 2010 General Electric agreed to finance and conduct a second dredging campaign at the Upper Hudson River between Fort Edward and Troy. These works will be supervised by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Regions

The Hudson Valley is divided into three regions: Lower, Middle and Upper. The following is a list of the counties within the Hudson Valley sorted by region.

Lower Hudson Westchester Rockland Putnam Bergen (New Jersey)

Mid-Hudson Dutchess Orange Ulster

Upper Hudson/Capital District Columbia Greene Rensselaer Albany

Communities

See also: Timeline of town creation in the Hudson Valley

See also: Timeline of town creation in New York's Capital District

Airmont Albany Ancram Annandale-on-Hudson Arlington Athens Balmville Beacon Brewster Buchanan Carmel Castleton-on-Hudson Catskill Chester Chestnut Ridge Coeymans Cohoes Cold Spring Congers Copake Cornwall Cortlandt Manor Coxsackie Croton-on-Hudson Delmar Dobbs Ferry East Fishkill East Greenbush Elsmere Esopus Fairview

Fishkill Fort Montgomery Garrison Gardiner Germantown Glasco Goshen Grand View-on-Hudson Hastings-on-Hudson Haverstraw Highland Highland Falls Highland Mills Hillburn Hillcrest Hillsdale Hudson Hyde Park Irvington Kingston Mahopac Malden-on-Hudson Marlboro Menands Middletown Millbrook Milton Monroe Monsey Montgomery

Montrose Mount Ivy Nanuet New Baltimore New City New Hamburg New Paltz New Windsor Newburgh, City of Newburgh, Town of Nyack Ossining Palisades Patterson Pawling Pearl River Peekskill Piermont Pleasant Valley Pomona Port Ewen Poughkeepsie Putnam Valley Ravena Red Hook Rensselaer Rhinebeck Rhinecliff Saugerties Selkirk

Sleepy Hollow Sloatsburg South Nyack Sparkill Spring Valley Staatsburg Stockport Stony Point Stuyvesant Suffern Taghkanic Tarrytown Tivoli Troy Upper Nyack Valhalla Valley Cottage Van Keurens Verplanck Wappinger Warwick Washingtonville Watervliet Wawarsing West Haverstraw West Nyack West Park West Point Yonkers Yorktown

Sports

The Hudson Valley Renegades is a minor league baseball team affiliated with the Tampa Bay Rays. The team is a member of the New York - Penn League and plays at Dutchess Stadium in Fishkill.

The Hudson Valley Rebels are the Hudson Valley's Premiere Rugby union club. The Hudson Valley Rebels are members of the Metropolitan New York Rugby Football Union and were established in 2001. Their home pitch is Beacon Memorial Park, in Beacon.

The Hudson Valley Highlanders of the North American Football League play their home games at Dietz Stadium in Kingston.

The Hudson Valley Horrors are the region's first non-urban flat track women's roller derby team and are part of the grass-roots derby revival. They currently practice and host bouts at Hyde Park Roller Magic in Hyde Park.

The Rockland Boulders of the Can-Am Professional Baseball League play in Rockland County.

Further reading

• Donaldson Eberlein, Harold; Van Dyke Hubbard, Cortlandt (1942). Historic houses of the Hudson valley. New York: Architectural Book Pub. Co. OCLC 3444265. 
• Scheltema, Gajus and Westerhuijs, Heleen (eds.),Exploring Historic Dutch New York. Museum of the City of New York/Dover Publications, New York (2011). ISBN 978-0-486-48637-6
• Historic Hudson Valley (1991). Visions of Washington Irving: Selected Works From the Collections of Historic Hudson Valley. Tarrytown, NY: Historic Hudson Valley. ISBN 978-0-912882-99-4. 
• Hudson Valley Health Systems Agency (1993). Health Maintenance Organizations in the Hudson Valley Region. Tuxedo, NY: Hudson Valley Health Systems Agency. OCLC 30910810. 
• McMurry, James; Jones, Jeff (1974). The Catskill Witch and Other Tales of the Hudson Valley. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-0105-0. 
• Mylod, John (1969). Biography of a River: The People and Legends of the Hudson Valley. New York: Hawthorn Books. OCLC 33563. 
• Howat, John K. (1972). The Hudson River and Its Painters. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-670-38558-4. 
• Marks, Alfred H. (1973). Literature of the Mid Hudson Valley: A Preliminary Study. New Paltz, NY: Center for Continuing Education, State University College. OCLC 1171631. 
• Talbott, Hudson (2009). River of Dreams: The Story of the Hudson River. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 978-0-399-24521-3. 
• Wallkill Valley Publishing Association (1904). The Historic Wallkill and Hudson River Valleys. Walden, NY: Wallkill Valley Publishing Association. OCLC 13418978. http://www.archive.org/details/historicwallkill07wall. 
• Wharton, Edith (1929). Hudson River Bracketed. New York: D. Appleton & Company. OCLC 297188. 
• Wilkinson Reynolds, Helen (1965). Dutch houses in the Hudson Valley before 1776. New York: Dover Publications. OCLC 513732. 

External links

• Hudson Valley Directory
• Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area
• Hudson River Valley Greenway
• Hudson River Valley Heritage: digital collection of historical materials
• Livingston-Svirsky Archive (LiSA)