Honoring the Past
The CCC’s Hudson Valley Legacy
Earlier this year a New York Times op-ed called for the U.S. to dust off one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps, to boost the pandemic economy by creating jobs that benefit the environment. That...
Honoring Sojourner Truth
Imagine being enslaved for 29 years — beginning at the moment of your birth. Imagine being subjected to cruelty that permanently scars your body. Imagine having someone renege on his promise to let you be free. This was reality for...
Remembering America’s First Woman Botanist
Driving along the distinctly suburban stretch of Route 17K in Coldenham, a hamlet in Orange County’s Town of Montgomery, it’s hard to imagine a time when this could have been “the habitation only of wolves and bears and other wild...
10 Facts About the Dutchess County Fair
COVID has put the kibosh on lots of summer staples this year, but perhaps the most-missed attraction will be the Dutchess County Fair.
Thurgood Marshall’s Valley Legacy
Travelers whizzing along Route 17 — perhaps on their way to or from hikes in Harriman or Sterling Forest State parks — may have noticed that a portion of the road in Rockland County is now named the Thurgood Marshall...
10 Facts About HV Bricks
Scattered along the shores of the Hudson River, it’s not hard to find red “rocks” — or the remnants of bricks. Sometimes you’ll even find one intact enough to still display the name of the factory where it was made....
Life, Liberty & the Hudson Valley
The fireworks and cookouts we enjoy on the Fourth of July celebrate the Declaration of Independence. This year, also light a sparkler to honor the courageous signers of the “Coxsackie Declaration of Independence,” drafted 245 years ago, in May of...
Rachel Carson & the Clearwater
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, is considered the bible of the modern environmental movement. Its compelling and science-based account of the horrors inflicted on Earth’s entire ecosystem by the pesticide DDT galvanized people to take a stand against...