Mr. Hudson's River

I took the train into New York City the other day and the ride along the Hudson River in the splendor of fall is spectacular.

This year is the 405^th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the Hudson River.

To be factual, Henry didn’t really discover it. Native people had been living near it since about 4000 BC, so old Henry only uncovered the river for the Dutch East India Company in Europe. He returned to his benefactors with beaver pelts, and praise for a vast land with rich resources.

I have lived in or near the Hudson Valley for over sixty years and I’ve learned a few things about it.

Three presidents have come from the Hudson Valley. Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Van Buren and six Vice Presidents.

The paragons of industry: Vanderbilt, Eastman, and Vassar, made part of their fortunes on and off the Hudson River.

James Fennimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant and Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote about the river.

John Burroughs studied the region's natural history and attended conferences at Mohonk Mountain House.

Landscape painters Weir, Innes and Cole were artistic evangelists for the river and leaders in the Hudson River school, the only school of painting produced by American Artists.

I once did a documentary on the Hudson River. It took a year to film for we started at Lake Tear of the Clouds in the lee of Mount Marcy where the Hudson begins and told the story of the river through its people and commerce down to Manhattan.

Some facts I remember.

From Manhattan to Troy, there is no drop at all in the surface elevation of the Hudson. The ocean tides run all the way to the Federal Lock and Dam at Troy.

It’s not really a river it’s an estuary.

A log dropped into the river at Troy would take months to float down to Manhattan. In some areas for every 8-miles the current and ebb tide carry the log down river, the flood tide could shove it back upriver as much as 7 1/2 miles.

The upriver penetration of salt water, or the salt wedge as it is called, varies with rainfall, but normally it stops near Newburgh, 60-miles from the Battery. It's been as far south as the Battery when in 1968 five inches of rain was dumped into the Hudson drainage system.

The rocking action of the tides keeps the lower Hudson stirred up like thick soup. Mixing is thorough, and the temperature at the bottom of the river, 100-feet from the surface, may not vary one degree.

The area known as the Tappan Zee, which gives its name to the bridge, has a depth of about 500 feet. This section is nine miles long, two miles wide. A new bridge is being built next the old one.

When the old bridge was built in the early 1950’s, the bedrock was too deep to anchor the pilings. The Bridge was built on floating caissons settled in the muck of shells and mud and rubble. The “S” shape of the bridge was done to ease the strain of the river's flow.

The Hudson River's 13-thousand 370 square mile watershed reaches into five states. Minor tributaries also rise in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont. New Jersey claims 20 miles of the Hudson’s shore.