linguistically different communities existed within a few miles of each other. Unlike other parts of North America where these different groups often battled each other, in the valley, these different peoples engaged in commerce with each other, attended religious services together, and inter-married. The region was one of the most contested battlegrounds of the American Revolution (George Washington spent more than a third of the American Revolution battling the British up and down the Valley), and in the nineteenth century, the River emerged as one of the major commercial conduits in the world, helping to fuel the economic rise of New York City. The region’s great beauty attracted painters like Thomas Cole and Frederick Church, and authors like James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving, who artistically rendered the region as a symbol of America’s identity and potential. Indeed, America’s first recognized schools of literature and art – the Hudson River writers and the Hudson River School of Landscape Painting – emerged from the work of these early artists. Hudson River landscape painting was among America’s most popular art-forms in the nineteenth century, with thousands of people journeying up the river to visit the historic sites and view the striking scenery. For the young United States, without many of the key characteristics of a national identity, such as its own language or a mythical past, the Hudson River landscape, in the words of Fran Dunwell, “became the focus of a quest for national identity.” One of the distinctive, but generally forgotten, features of the historic Hudson Valley was its peculiar system of land-ownership during the first centuries of settlement. Through the early nineteenth century, a large portion of the valley was owned by a handful of “manor lords.” About one-third of the valley (including much of modern Renssalaer, Columbia and Dutchess counties) was carved into a handful of massive manors under the ownership of landlords (such as the Livingstons and Van Renssalaers) who “leased” land to the tenants who tilled the land. The manor lords possessed leases for several thousand tenant families, many of whom owed the lord traditional services and duties that were more characteristic of medieval England than early America. Leases ran
for several generations and demanded that tenants work several days a year for the lord, or require symbolic payments of rent in fowl and produce. Twice, in the late eighteenth century and again in the 1840s, the Valley erupted in wide-scale rebellion, which was only quelled by the use of the army sent into to suppress the rebellions. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Hudson Valley emerged as one of America’s first major tourist destinations. Thousands of people, from all across the northeast and Europe, were aided by quicker river travel (via the new steamboat) and journeyed up the river to visit the historic sites, the revolutionary forts and battlegrounds; hike the mountains and admire the waterfalls; as well as view the landscapes being made famous in the works of Hudson Valley writers and painters. In the process the valley helped to establish America’s first tourist industry. Most of the tourists who began to travel up the river did so not to simply see the attractions, but to view those attractions while staying in the new hotels and mountain houses that were springing up throughout the region. The resorts themselves became the destination point, since these new hotels, inns, and “mountain houses” were developed to accommodate the scenic tourist. By the late nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, America’s moneyed elites built their castles along the river. New financial titans like the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, and the Morgans, became neighbors of the landed gentry of the Livingstons, Roosevelts, and Astors. The twentieth century also witnessed the effort to protect the historic infrastructure of the valley through efforts like the National Park Service and Heritage Areas, as well as the great legal struggles to reclaim the river, including the political battle waged to save Storm King and the establishment of the Clean Air Act. Several of the key National Park Service sites in the Hudson River Valley – the Saratoga Battlefield, the Thomas Cole House, the Roosevelt and Vanderbilt estates and Val-Kill – reflect the varieties of the Hudson Valley’s rich history, distinctive regional culture, and important contributions to the development of modern America.
hudson valley the landscape that defined america BY Thomas Wermuth
As the nation celebrates the 100th anniversary of the United States National Park Service, the federal agency that manages and maintains millions of acres of historic property throughout the United States, including several key sites in the Hudson River Valley, it would be useful to examine why the history of this region has been so compelling to authors, painters, historians, and the millions of travelers who visit the region each years. In 1996, the United States Congress formally named the Hudson River Valley a “National Heritage Area,” one of only thirteen in the nation at that time. Unlike other national Heritage Areas that were introduced to recognize noteworthy events, such as the Antietam Battlefield Heritage Area, or the Lowell-Lynn Industrial Corridor, the
Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area was titled “The Landscape that Defined America” and was recognized not for any single or specific historical event, but for the region’s “significant and ongoing contributions to American history and culture.” In many ways, the Hudson River Valley served as a symbol of America’s identity and promise. The only one of the original thirteen British North American colonies not settled by the English or by English speakers (the first fifty years of the Hudson Valley’s settled history was as part of New Netherlands, a Dutch colony), it was probably America’s first “melting pot.” In addition to the various native groups that already lived in the valley, the Dutch, English, French Huguenots, and, through coercion, African slaves, all settled in the valley and ethnically and
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