Hudson River

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HUDSON RIVER

HUDSON RIVER. From its Adirondack origin in Lake Tear of the Clouds to its southern terminus in upper New York Bay, the Hudson River, 306 miles in length, drains an area of about 13,370 square miles. While its waters were long traveled and fished by Indians, the first European to see the Hudson was probably Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian sailing for the French, who explored the area in 1524. Although other Europeans reached the Hudson during the sixteenth century, settlement occurred only after Henry Hudson's September 1609 voyage of exploration. Hudson, an Englishman in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, was seeking a northwest passage to the Far East. On his ship, the Half Moon, he sailed about 150 miles up the river that now bears his name.

After Hudson reported on the availability of furs along the river, Amsterdam fur traders established a Dutch trading post at Fort Nassau (near present-day Albany) in 1613. In 1623, the newly created West India Company took over the fort, renaming it Fort Orange, while the vast territory claimed by the Dutch was called New Netherland, with its principal settlement, New Amsterdam, at the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Much of the settlement of New Netherland was concentrated on the Hudson River, with a few large patroonships established along its banks. The river and the territory remained in Dutch hands until 1664, when Sir Richard

Nicolls led a force of Englishmen who seized the territory and renamed it New York.

The Hudson played a significant role during the American Revolution, with both the British and the Americans seeking to maintain control of the waterway. On 12 July 1776, Admiral Lord Richard Howe sent two British warships, the Phoenix and the Rose, thirty miles up the Hudson to Tarrytown. To prevent the British from moving further north, logs were used to float an iron chain across the river from the fort at West Point to Constitution Island.

New York's most dramatic growth followed the end of the Revolution, when the Six Nations of the Iroquois ceded most of their territory to the state, permitting settlers to move up the Hudson and then west. Growth was further accelerated with the 1807 invention of the steamboat. Steamboats sparked the state's economic development and eventually fostered a tourist industry by attracting wealthy city residents north to the Catskills and Adirondacks. Even more rapid economic growth followed the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, as goods from Lake Erie ports were moved through New York State and then down the Hudson to shipping facilities in New York City. The completion of the Hudson River Railroad in 1851 further spurred trade and encouraged wealthy New Yorkers to build homes along the Hudson.

The beauty of the Hudson River valley sparked a revolution in American art with the development of the Hudson River school of painters. By the early nineteenth century, artists such as Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, John Kensett, Thomas Doughty, Jasper Cropsey, George Inness, and John Casilear created American landscapes that celebrated the natural beauty of the area. The river and its mountains also served as a favored locale in the literary works of such American writers as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper.

The river has paid a price for progress and development. By the twentieth century, the Hudson had become a polluted waterway. The river was the focal point for conservationists when, in 1962, Con Edison made a proposal to build a hydroelectric plant on the river at Storm King Mountain. Opposition to the plant prompted the U.S. Court of Appeals to insist that the planners consider the effects of the plant on the environment. In the ensuing battle, the pressure brought by environmental groups led Con Edison to drop the Storm King project in 1980. A later environmental battle concerned the dumping of over one million pounds of the carcinogenic substance polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) in the Hudson by major corporations situated on its banks. In 2001, the Environ-mental Protection Agency ordered General Electric to begin a $500 million dredging operation of the Hudson River to remove the PCBs.