Hudson

Hudson, river, eastern New York State, rising in the Adirondack Mountains and flowing south for about 507 km (315 mi) to Upper New York Bay (an arm of the Atlantic Ocean) at New York.

The Hudson has a winding upper course and flows almost directly south below Hudson Falls. The headwaters of the river are the outlets of several small lakes in the Adirondacks; the largest headstream is the Opalescent River, which flows out of Lake Tear of the Clouds. The river falls rapidly in the upper waters, having a drop of about 15 m (50 ft) at Glens Falls, the first sizeable town on its course. At Cohoes the Hudson is joined by its principal tributary, the Mohawk. From Troy to the mouth of the Hudson the effects of tides are observable, making the river navigable by small ocean-going vessels to Albany and Troy, about 240 km (150 mi) from its mouth.

Below Albany the channel of the river is in places very narrow, and the banks are lined with some high, steep hills and mountains. Flowing past the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson Highlands, below Newburgh, the river is famous for beautiful scenery. For almost half of the last 65 km (41 mi) of its length, the river widens into a lake-like expanse called Lake Tappan. For the rest of the distance to its mouth, the Hudson forms the boundary between New York and New Jersey. In this lower region, the western shore, opposite Manhattan, is formed by a great cliff of traprock known as the Palisades. As a tidal estuary, the Hudson has a large volume of water, far out of proportion to the area it drains, which is about 34,630 sq km (13,370 sq mi).

The Hudson River is one of the most important commercial waterways in the eastern United States, forming part of a trade route to the interior of North America. The river is joined just north of Albany by divisions of the New York State Barge Canal System, which link the Hudson to Lake Champlain, the Great Lakes, and the St Lawrence River. The commercial importance of the Hudson declined somewhat after the opening, in 1959, of the St Lawrence Seaway, which provides an alternative route from the Atlantic to the interior. A major problem of the last century or so has been the severe pollution of the Hudson by industrial waste and sewage.

The Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 became the first European to sail on the Hudson. The river was first explored in 1609 by the English navigator Henry Hudson, after whom it is named. The Hudson Valley was settled early in the 17th century by the Dutch and was of great commercial and military importance during the colonial period. During the American War of Independence the Hudson was a strategic waterway and the site of many historic events. In 1807 the inventor Robert Fulton launched the Clermont, one of the first practical steamboats, on the Hudson. Trade on the river flourished after the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825. The Holland (1927) and Lincoln (1957) road and rail tunnels were built under the river in order to access Manhattan. Among the bridges spanning the Hudson are Bear Mountain Bridge (1924), near Peekskill, and the George Washington Bridge at New York.

Points of interest along the Hudson include the US Military Academy, at West Point, and the estate of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at Hyde Park. A noted movement of 19th-century US landscape painting that included Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand is known as the Hudson River school.