Huckleberry Picking, An Old Summer Tradition in the Shawangunks
The poor, acidic, and shallow soil on top of the Shawangunk Ridge was never ideal for farming — but it offered a perfect medium for huckleberries and wild blueberries to grow. For a century of summers, from the 1860s into...
Newburgh’s Balmville Tree, a Landmark of American History
Among local trees that have captured the imagination, it’s hard to top the Balmville Tree. Walk, bike, or drive past it now, at the corner of River and Balmville roads in the Town of Newburgh, and it’s essentially a stump....
Irvington Park at 20: How a Former Lumberyard Became Community Space Instead of a Big Development
When Scenic Hudson Park at Irvington opened 20 years ago this week — on June 28, 2001 — the village got a beautiful place to enjoy magnificent views and active recreation instead of a mega-housing development. To celebrate, we reached...
Poets’ Walk Park at 25: Getting the Story Right
Poets’ Walk Park remains one of the Hudson Valley’s most popular destinations for enjoying spectacular views of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains — a place where landscape becomes poetry. Yet it turns out the story we’ve been telling about...
Take a Field Trip into the World’s Prehistoric Past
Humans have existed for fewer than 200,000 years, which means a lot of interesting stuff happened on Earth in the billions of years before our arrival. You don’t have to drive far from the Hudson Valley to explore that natural...
What the Blazes? Remembering the Great Ramapo Trail War
Normally, people who build hiking trails are a fun, collegial bunch — nature lovers united to blaze a path so others can share their enthusiasm for the outdoors. But in the 1920s and ’30s, the competition to create new trails...
Who Built Those Stone Walls in the Middle of the Woods?
Walk through many forests in the mid- and lower Hudson Valley — including those at Scenic Hudson’s Shaupeneak Ridge, Esopus Meadows and Black Creek preserves — and you’ll notice many kinds of stone walls snaking through the trees. Who erected...
Exploring the Palisades’ 200 Million Years of History
The Palisades — without doubt the Hudson Valley’s most unique geological feature — weathered a lot, literally and figuratively, over the years until a group of women stepped forward to save them. Though best known for the spectacular vertical walls...