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....
#HudsonInspired: Artist Arnie Zimmerman Works With the Valley’s Bricks and Clay
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Hudson Valley was the largest brickmaking district on the planet. Its metrics were stunning: It employed more than 10,000 people across about 120 brickyards, producing an estimated billion bricks a year. Due to...
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...
Blooming Now: The Valley’s Own Native Cactus
With all the emphasis on native plants these days, you’d be forgiven for shaking your head when stumbling across a cactus on a local hike, assuming it’s not native. But here’s a surprise: two types of seemingly desert-ready cactus are...
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...
#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...
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...