Hudson Discovers the River
Henry Hudson first came upon the Hudson River by accident in 1609. Hired by the Dutch East India Company to find a short passage to India, the Englishman sailed his ship Half Moon 150 miles up the Hudson to Albany before realizing that it was not the route he was seeking. At that time, there were approximately 10,000 natives living on both sides of the river. The tribes were part of the Algonquin Confederacy which included the Delaware, Mohican (aka Mohegan) and Wappinger tribes. The Mohican tribe was friendly and peaceful, but Hudson’s crew distrusted them and fighting followed.  As Dutch and other European settlers arrived in the Hudson Valley, they struggled with the natives for land. By the end of the century, most of the native tribes had been forced west or were destroyed by war and small pox brought in by the Europeans.

River Plays a Key Role in the American Revolution
During the 1700s, the colonists realized that the river was essential for the transport of troops and supplies and that if the British gained control of it, they would be able to divide and conquer the American forces. West Point, Fort Montgomery, Fort Clinton and Fort Constitution had all been built in the Bear Mountain region to prevent the British from advancing up the river. In 1778, colonists created the Great Chain, two-foot long iron links which stretched across the river between West Point and Constitution Island to prevent the British from sailing upriver from New York City. The British, however, never came that far up the river so the chain was never put to the test. General Benedict Arnold, in command of West Point, was offered 20,000 pounds sterling by the British if he would help them take control of the Hudson and in 1780, he attempted to surrender the fort to the British. Fortunately for the colonists, the plot was discovered when the American forces captured Major John André, the British officer to whom Arnold had passed plans for West Point. Arnold narrowly escaped to a British war ship.

Traders, Artists and Millionaires
After the invention of the steamboat in 1807, the Hudson River became a destination for leisure travelers. By 1850, there were approximately 150 steamboats used for commerce, industry, and leisure, carrying a million passengers up and down the Hudson.  Once the Erie Canal opened in 1825, linking Lake Erie to the Hudson River, the Hudson became a trade channel, which fostered much economic and industrial development along the river. During this period, artists and writers flocked to the area.  Painters such as Thomas Cole, John Casilear, John Frederick Kensett, Sanford Gifford, Thomas Doughty, George Inness, David Johnson, Thomas Rossiter, Jasper Cropsey, Robert Weir and Frederic E. Church, became known as the Hudson River School of Painting. On the literary side, writers Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant found inspiration for their works in the Hudson River Valley as well.

In the 1840’s, German and Irish immigrants flooded into New York City, driven from their home countries by famine and revolution. Meanwhile, industry developed to meet the military’s needs, aided by the advent of railroads into the region. As the crowded city became a breeding ground for tuberculosis and other diseases, city dwellers sought out the Hudson Valley as a health retreat.  Wealthy industrialists also began buying land and building magnificent weekend retreats along the river. “Millionaires Row” in the mid-Hudson region includes the Vanderbilt Mansion, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s home and Val-Kill, Eleanor Roosevelt’s home, in Hyde Park, and Boscobel in Cold Spring.

The Conservation Movement
At the end of the 19th century, a struggle to preserve the Hudson Valley’s natural beauty and environment began. Industry and railroad lines had sprung up along the river and much of the valley had been clear cut. The federal government established the Division of Forestry and created the first national parks. The Palisades Interstate Park Commission bought up land from Fort Lee, NJ to Piermont, NY in order to preserve the high cliffs along the Hudson known as the Palisades which were being eaten away by the quarry mines. And in 1910, E.W. Harriman and other businessmen donated land to create Bear Mountain-Harriman State Park. With the entry of the U.S. into World War II, however, all conservation efforts came to a halt.

In 1962, the modern environmental movement was forged in the battle for Storm King Mountain near Cornwall. Con Edison was planning to build a huge hydro-electric plant at Storm King, the beautiful high ridge that sits at the mouth of the Hudson Highlands. Local activists, determined to protect this natural resource, formed the Scenic Hudson Preservation Coalition and brought suit against the utility giant. After much legal wrangling, the court decided, for the first time in U. S. history, that environmental impacts had to be considered in such projects. Congress then passed the National Environmental Policy Act which mandated that all major projects needing federal approval had to have an environmental impact study done.  The battle between Con Ed and the activists dragged on until 1979 when Con Edison finally abandoned the project and donated the land for a park.

The Birth of Riverkeeper
In 1966, a group of blue-collar commercial and recreational fishermen formed the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association and met at the American Legion Hall in Crotonville, NY to bemoan what was happening to the Hudson River. The river, which had once teemed with striped bass, blue fish, sturgeon, shad, herring, alewives, trout, black bass, blue crabs and eels, was dying. Pollution was pouring into the Hudson: 1.5 billion gallons of raw sewage from New York City each day, paint from the General Motors Plant in Tarrytown, oil discharged from the Penn Central Railroad, Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) from the General Electric Plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, and more. Then Bob Boyle, an ex-Marine, writer for Sports Illustrated and fly fisherman, told the angry group that he had discovered two forgotten laws which prohibited the pollution of American waters and offered a bounty for reporting violations: the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1888 and the Refuse Act of 1899. The fishermen’s group, which eventually became Riverkeeper, used these two laws to go after polluters, one at a time. With the bounty from these victories, Riverkeeper launched its boat that today patrols the Hudson River every day searching out polluters.

Since 1983, Riverkeeper has investigated and brought to justice over 300 environmental lawbreakers. The Hudson, often called an “open sewer” during the 1960s, celebrates its 400th anniversary in 2009 and is cleaner today than it has been in decades. Its extraordinary revitalization has inspired the establishment of “waterkeepers” on over 150 waterways across the globe.

If you’re interested in learning more about Hudson River history, see The Hudson, A History by Tom Lewis (2007, Yale University Press).