


The Mountainside Ride That Opened Up the Catskills
As far as Hudson Valley mountain rails go, the Mount Beacon Incline Railway seems to get all the glory. From 1902 to 1978, it lifted some 3.5 million passengers to the 1,540-foot summit. There — at least for a time —...
Rounding Up Family and Friends to Monitor Eels
Growing up in Queens, I never once thought, “I’d like to study eels one day,” but in early 2020 my teenage son was looking for volunteer opportunities. When I heard about the eel monitoring that Scenic Hudson collaborates on with...
#WildlifeLove: All About the Hudson River’s Feisty (and Tasty) Blue Crab
Blue crabs may not be as synonymous with the Hudson River as they are with Chesapeake Bay — but plenty of these colorful crustaceans live in the estuary’s brackish waters, with some even found as far north as the federal...
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...
Climate Solutions: 30×30, a Visionary Plan that Multiplies the Benefits of Land Protection

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...
Can the Empire State Trail Help Inspire More Biking in New York?
National Bike Month is picking up speed — especially in New York State. As in the rest of the country, biking has experienced a resurgence in the Hudson Valley and statewide during the pandemic, with increasing numbers of people relying on...
The Shad Are Running — But for How Much Longer?
April usually marks the beginning of the shad run in the Hudson River, when adult males and females begin journeying from their haunts in the Atlantic Ocean — somewhere between Canada’s Bay of Fundy and the Virginia coast — to...