Scenic Beauty

Starting with our successful campaign to protect Storm King Mountain — the dramatic northern gateway to the Hudson Highlands — Scenic Hudson has been committed to conserving the open lands and waters that have shaped our region’s histories and cultures. We believe beautiful natural places and flourishing ecosystems: 

• Help improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities 
• Attract visitors who support the local tourism and recreation economies 
• Stir and inspire the human spirit to stand up for the places we love 

That’s why we take a big-picture approach, focusing our conservation work on protecting landscapes to ensure that all visitors and residents have access to the same sweeping views that inspired and nurtured so many before us. 

Long before European settlers arrived, Indigenous peoples like the Mohican and the Lenape cared for these natural treasures as the region’s first land stewards. We continue to learn from their sustainable agricultural practices and reciprocal relationships with the natural world today.

In the 19th century, the vistas here sparked the creativity of Hudson River School painters such as Thomas Cole, founder of the movement. They figured prominently in Frederic Church’s design of his masterpiece of a home, Olana — whose viewshed we have helped protect. 

In the early 20th century, a beautiful Hudson Valley setting hosted and inspired leaders at the historic Amenia Conferences. W.E.B. Du Bois later described the first conference as “an informal gathering in the open air” that turned out to be central to the workers’ and civil rights movements and the formation of the NAACP. 

Decades later, these magnificent landscapes sustained President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the dark days of World War II, when he wrote: “All that is within me cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson River.”