New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced that their Hudson Estuary Trees for Tribs Program is accepting applications for spring stream-side planting projects. Anyone that owns or manages property near a stream in the Hudson River Estuary watershed is eligible to apply for free native trees and shrubs. [Read more…] about Hudson Estuary Tree Program Accepting Applications
Hudson River
DEC Proposes Circle Hook Requirement For Striped Bass
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has released a new proposed regulation for public review and comment that would require the use of circle hooks when recreational fishing for Atlantic striped bass. [Read more…] about DEC Proposes Circle Hook Requirement For Striped Bass
Sullivan County D&H Canal History Highlighted With ‘Kate Project’
During the month of December in 1824, brothers William and Maurice Wurts were diligently planning a presentation to potential investors in their ambitious project to build a canal connecting their coal fields in northeastern Pennsylvania to the Hudson River. [Read more…] about Sullivan County D&H Canal History Highlighted With ‘Kate Project’
The First (Short Lived) Suspension Bridge Across The Hudson River
Robert Codgell Gilchrist was born into an extremely wealthy well-connected Charleston family in 1829. The oligarchic families of South Carolina had made their wealth on tobacco, rice, indigo, and shipping and Charleston harbor was one of the centers of the southern slave trade. Robert Gilchist’s father had received a federal Judgeship from President Martin Van Buren and he owned an opulent home.
Each summer the wealthy Gilchrist family journeyed north to avoid the hot humid subtropical summers of Charleston. They stayed with maternal family members in the Great Northern Wilderness of New York. (The term Adirondacks is said to have been first used by geologist and surveyor Ebenezer Emmons in 1838 and took some time to come into general use). [Read more…] about The First (Short Lived) Suspension Bridge Across The Hudson River
Easement Acquired On 1830 Dutchess County Farm
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the Dutchess Land Conservancy (DLC) have announced the acquisition of a conservation easement on an 1830 farm in the town of Pine Plains.
The Land Conservancy acquired the Jordan Lane Farm easement with New York State Water Quality Improvement Project (WQIP) funding that provides resources to protect source waters. [Read more…] about Easement Acquired On 1830 Dutchess County Farm
OSI Protects Land Near West Mountain, Warren County
Building on more than three decades of protecting land in and around the Adirondack Park, the Open Space Institute (OSI) has announced the permanent protection of land in the Town of Lake Luzerne.
The newly protected 1,260-acre “West Mountain” property is located west of the West Mountain Ski Area, between the southeastern boundary of the Adirondack Park and Moreau Lake State Park and adjacent to Ralph Road State Forest.
[Read more…] about OSI Protects Land Near West Mountain, Warren County
The Hudson River’s Fortress of Shoddy in Troy
Driving north on I-787 approaching Troy you can see an iconic building – a tall red brick building with turrets that looks like a fortress.
It’s at 1 Jackson Street. What I like to call the Fortress of Shoddy. [Read more…] about The Hudson River’s Fortress of Shoddy in Troy
Hudson River Dam History: The Big Hadley And Glen Dams
One day as my wife and I and our dogs walked along River Road at Riparius on the Hudson River, my wife said to me in a folksy manner “just think all this water here, is on its way to New York City.”
It’s true the Hudson River has flowed out of the Adirondack Mountains for millennia, southward towards the Atlantic Ocean. And over the last two centuries or so there have been plans to dam the Upper Hudson for one reason or another. Most of those plans have dealt with using the water resources for some down state endeavor. [Read more…] about Hudson River Dam History: The Big Hadley And Glen Dams
Poetry: Humpbacks of the Hudson
Humpbacks of the Hudson
Before the finned
dinosaurs of the icy
depths were
disappointed by
the steamships
of men, they cast
their ballads into
the velvet abyss,
waiting as mothers
do with untamed hearts,
big as school buses.
A New Hudson River Historic Fiction: Tail Feather
Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
The new novel Tail Feather: Adventures of a Mohawk Paddler on the River-That-Flows-Two-Ways (2020) by Ray E. Phillips delivers the audience to turbulent times archaeologists call the “contact period,” the time of first encounters between indigenous people of the Americas and European explorers, traders, and settlers.
The story embraces a sweeping panorama off the Hudson River from Lake-Tear-of-the-Clouds in the Adirondacks the Manhattan Island. [Read more…] about A New Hudson River Historic Fiction: Tail Feather