America’s Rhine: The Hudson River

You’d never guess it walking along the West Side in Manhattan, but the cloudy, brackish waters of New York City’s famous Hudson River begins in the clear mountainous forests of the Adirondacks some 300 miles north.

 
These photos were taken near Newcomb, New York. The Hudson River starts about 10 miles north from this point, at Lake Tear of the Clouds.

 
The Hudson River is New York State’s longest river at 315 miles, winding its snaky way down the Adirondacks high peaks to New York’s capital city, Albany, down to New York City where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. The Mohawk River, New York’s second largest river, is the largest tributary to the Hudson at 140 miles.

Watershed map from Wikipedia.

 
Here’s a shot of the Hudson very near to its headwaters. I can’t remember exactly where this was, but it was north of Newcomb near Henderson Lake.

 

The Hudson River in Catskill, NY.

 
The Rip van Winkle Bridge over the Hudson near Catskill, NY. Photo taken from Olana Historic Site.

 
The Hudson River from an Amtrak train heading to Manhattan. The brilliant blue and sparkly waters undulating through New York’s most scenic landscape has earned the Hudson the nickname “America’s Rhine.”

 
The Hudson drains into the Atlantic Ocean at New York Bay.

 
Every schoolchild in New York learns that the Hudson is named for the famous British explorer Henry Hudson, who sailed in 1609 on behalf of the Dutch on his ship Halve Maen (Half Moon). He was searching for the Northwest Passage, a speculative (and, as it became known, nonexistent) waterway through the American continent from east to west. Hudson’s discovery and exploration of the Hudson River paved the way for Dutch claims to the land and Dutch settlement from New York City (then called New Netherland) to Albany.
 
You’d think such an auspicious adventurer would have gotten a bit more respect at the time, but no. After Hudson sailed up the river that would later bear his name, he had to turn around because this was not the Northwest Passage. Determined to find it, Hudson sailed again in 1611. He traveled as far north as James Bay and what later became Hudson Bay in northern Canada. The journey was so cold and so arduous that the crew mutinied that summer. They tossed Hudson, his young son, and six sick crew members in a boat and set them adrift in the Hudson Bay. Hudson and the others were never heard from again… not until Washington Irving featured them in his fanciful tale of Rip van Winkle some 200 years later.

Below the Hudson

New York’s Hudson River is notorious for being a veritable soup of trash, sludge, and ship debris. But two divers decided to have a deeper, closer look at exactly was down in New York’s most famous river. YUK.

The steady transformation of New York’s waterfront from wasteland to playground means more of us are spending time along the city’s edge. That can lead a person to wonder: What, exactly, is down there? Until recently, we had patchy knowledge of what lies beneath the surface of one of the world’s busiest harbors

…Two kinds of hungry pests gnaw away at the pilings that hold up structures like the FDR Drive, the U.N. school on East 25th Street, and the Con Ed plant at 14th. Teredos, which start life looking like tiny clams, grow up to be worms “as big around as your thumb, and nearly four feet long, with little triangular teeth,” says commercial diver Lenny Speregen. Like underwater termites, they devour wood. And Limnoria tripunctata, a.k.a. “gribbles,” are bugs about the size of a pencil dot that look like tiny armadillos, and eat not only wood but also concrete. Speregen says he’s seen fifteen-inch-diameter columns that have been gnawed down, hourglass style, to three inches. The city has tried jacketing pilings in heavy plastic to keep the critters out, but it hasn’t worked well: Floating ice tears up the jackets in winter. “I never said this wasn’t a war,” says Speregen.

…The harbor’s water is brownish, but not chiefly because of pollution. It’s brown because the Hudson carries an average of 2,200 tons of sediment per day from upstate (more in the autumn and spring, much less in the summer). For divers, all that silt obscures almost everything. “I always say, gimme a foot of viz”—visibility—“and that’s a great day,” says the NYPD’s John Drzal. “Even with a light, you can see just enough to gauge how much air you have left.” It’s a lot like going into a fire, adds Frederick Ill III, a diver from the FDNY’s Rescue Company No. 1. “Except that when you’re on the bottom, and you’ve gotta get out, you’re on your own.”

Thanks to Cromely for the heads up about the very interesting (and slighly repulsive) article.

I’ve always had an interest in shipwrecks and ocean discovery/oceanography. I’ve seen all the old Shipwreck shows, watched Jacques Cousteau as a kid, and devoured the book Shadow Divers. That book has renewed my interest in what lurks in the depths of the ocean here off the Northeastern coastline. (Shadow Divers is all about a team of divers who discovered an unidentified German U-Boat, 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey). You can read more about it here– it’s fascinating! And from what I have heard, there’s a motion picture coming out this year based on the book.

Certainly the Hudson is like the pasta fazool of soups– a little bit of everything. Through the Hudson, just about everything in Upstate flows, since most of our rivers find their way to the Hudson and therefore to the Atlantic. So when divers say they’ve found everything including the kitchen sink, I believe them!

Photo Hunters: Wide

I’ve had loads and loads of photos for Photo Hunters lately. I’m going to break my current trend and just post ONE photo today. Today’s theme is “wide.” The first thing I thought of is the Hudson River. It is WIDE.

We visited New York’s capital city, Albany, NY, a few years ago and got to see New York’s famous river. The Hudson River is named for Henry Hudson, a British explorer who “discovered” the river in 1609, when traveling with the Dutch East India Company.

To you in the midwest, the Hudson River may not be terribly imposing– especially when compared to the mighty Mississippi. But the Hudson River is wide enough to have made Henry Hudson thought he could get to the other side of the continent through it. Hudson was looking for the Northwest Passage, a waterway from one side of the American continent to the other (this waterway does not exist).

The Native Indians called the Hudson “Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk,” which means “river that flows both ways.” The lower half of the Hudson is a tidal estuary, so the direction of its waters change with the tides. In the winter, the ice floes may drift northward or southward, depending on the tides!

The Hudson River is 315 miles long, and extremely wide. Because of its deep basin, it’s a major shipping route for the state. It is actually less expensive to transport goods via New York’s waterways than roads.

When New York’s Erie Canal was built across the central part of the state, it connected the Great Lakes with the Hudson River, which connected with the Atlantic Ocean. It was a tremendous accomplishment for its day, and radically altered the New York economy and the transportation system of the nation.

So there’s your mini-history lesson for the day! How did your Photo Hunters go today?