History, Natural History & the Arts
On September 27th, 2025, it will be two hundred years ago that the world’s first public railway, known as the Stockton & Darlington (S&DR), was opened in north-east England.
As well as carrying coal, the train offered space for six hundred passengers, most of them traveling in wagons, but some distinguished guests were allocated a seat in a specially designed carriage called The Experiment. [Read more…] about Railroads, The Spuyten Duyvil Disaster & Faustian Legend
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced $1.14 million in competitive grant funding is now available to help communities in the Hudson River Estuary watershed increase resiliency to flooding, protect water quality, fish, and wildlife habitat, and improve recreational access and education for all, including people with disabilities and New Yorkers living in communities historically and disproportionately overburdened by environmental pollution. [Read more…] about Grants Now Available for Hudson River Estuary Communities
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced that all along the Hudson River Estuary, teachers, students, and local residents are donning waders and venturing into tributary streams to participate in DEC’s ongoing research on migrating juvenile American eels (Anguilla rostrata). [Read more…] about 15th Year of Juvenile Eel Monitoring Begins
Hand-built in the mid-1800s, the 4,000-foot-long Piermont Pier on the Hudson River in Rockland County was once a terminus of the longest railroad in the world – the Erie Railroad.
Hampered by rules about railroads crossing state lines, the Erie built a pier nearly a mile long across the marshy bay at Piermont and out to the deeper parts of the Hudson River, where steamboats could pick up passengers and take them on to New York City. [Read more…] about Hudson River Railroad & Steamboat History: Piermont Pier
The Hudson River Estuary Program announced a new Hudson River Curriculum Guide, featuring original lesson plans from the Estuary Program and its partners. The inquiry-based, multi-component science guide is designed for teachers and students to enhance STEM learning, as well as deepen their engagement and understanding of the Hudson River and its watershed. [Read more…] about Hudson River Lesson Plans For K-12 Teachers
On this episode of Empire State Engagements, a conversation with author, historian, and mariner Jessica DuLong about her book Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boatlift (Three Hills/Cornell University Press, 2021). [Read more…] about Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat-Lift
“The importance of the Hudson River in the present contest, and the necessity of defending it, are subjects which have been so frequently and fully discussed and are so well understood that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon them.” – George Washington
It is hard to imagine a time in the United States when highways did not exist, but that was certainly the case at the time of the Revolutionary War. Some cities could brag of their cobblestone streets but once outside the residential area, roads could best be described as single-lane dirt paths, frozen solid but probably covered with snow in winter, mud bogs in spring, and deeply rutted, jarring, swaying and unstable conveyances the rest of the year.
A small military wagon could move along only as fast as a team of oxen could pull it. Moving armies and cannon along these roadways was a slow, difficult undertaking, offering opposing forces considerable advance notice and many opportunities to thwart progress or attack. [Read more…] about Chains Across the Hudson, Stirling Ironworks & The Townsend Family
Hudson Highlands residents Barry and Mary Jean (MJ) Ross have donated their collection of Hudson River postcards to the Putnam History Museum.
The collection is comprised of 240 distinct early 20th century postcards with scenes of the Hudson River Valley – and related views, activities, landmarks, and landscapes – from New York Harbor to the Adirondacks. [Read more…] about Putnam History Museum Acquires Hudson River Postcard Collection
In the first days of August, 1777, Albany seemed doomed to be overrun by the British. General John Burgoyne had taken Crown Point, Fort Ticonderoga, Fort George, Fort Anne, Fort Edward and Fort Miller, the last substantial fortified place protecting the city from the north. To the west at Fort Stanwix, a siege was underway requiring many of General Philip Schyuler’s troops being sent to that fort’s defense from their camp on Van Schaick Island, now in the city of Cohoes.
Burgoyne however, had severely stretched his supply line. He was now having problems bringing up food and supplies over primitive roads that had been severely rutted and nearly destroyed by the Revolutionaries. He had to slow down to wait for food and had to keep his supply line protected all the way back to Canada, spreading his troops more thinly. [Read more…] about Revolutionary Albany: The Battles of Saratoga & Loyalist Opposition
Native and colonial Americans fished for shad for sustenance, often smoking the flesh and consuming the roe as a delicacy.
American shad continued to be an important recreational and commercial fishery throughout the 20th Century, especially in the Hudson River. However, the shad stock has since dramatically declined due to shoreline development, pollution and over fishing, and as a result all recreational and commercial fisheries for American shad were closed in 2010. [Read more…] about American Shad Recovery Plan For Hudson River Announced