Looking for holiday gifts? Need to build up your reading list for colder weather? We're listing some of our favorite Hudson River history books plus some new releases to tide you over until spring.

All of the following links to go Amazon. Just click on the book image or title to purchase. If you'd like to give the museum some extra support, shop at smile.amazon.com and select the Hudson River Maritime Museum as your charity. We'll get a small percentage of your purchase. Some of these books are also available in our museum store, so stop by to purchase in person! And as always, we have a large selection of rare and out of print maritime books in the store, perfect for browsing. 

The Hudson: America's River by Frances F. Dunwell

​Fran Dunwell offers up a beautifully illustrated history of the Hudson River with this coffee table book. In particular, Dunwell frames the Hudson River and its importance in New York State and national history.

The Hudson: A History by Tom Lewis

This somewhat scholarly book nevertheless provides an excellent overview of the Hudson River, from First Contact through the twentieth century. 

The Hudson: An Illustrated Guide to the Living River by Stephen P. Stanne with  Roger G. Panetta, Brian E. Forist, and Maija Liisa Niemisto

The third edition of this classic book will be released in January, 2021, but you can pre-order before the holidays. Containing information about the Hudson's wildlife, flora, and environmental history, The Hudson: An Illustrated Guide to the Living River​ is essential reading for any Hudson River enthusiast.

The Hudson River Highlands by Frances F. Dunwell

This classic text has kept its relevance. The museum consulted it for our RiverWise journey through the Highlands just this year! With chapters on everything from geology to the American Revolution, Dunwell's book is an engaging and interesting read. 

Embattled River: The Hudson and Modern American Environmentalism by David Schuyler (2018, paperback 2020)

​Newly out in paperback, Embattled River tells the story of the Hudson River and its role in the formation of the environmental movement in America. The museum consulted this book as part of its Rescuing the River exhibit. 

Sadly, David Schuyler passed away suddenly in July, 2020. We are grateful for his work and he will be missed.

In the Shadow of Genius: The Brooklyn Bridge and Its Creators by Barbara G. Mensch (2018)

Part coffee table book, part history, Barbara G. Mensch combines decades of her photography with archival images of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Weaving together her personal experience of living in the shadow of the bridge with the lives of John and Emily Roebling, In the Shadow of Genius makes for fascinating reading - and looking.

Hudson River Lighthouses by the Hudson River Maritime Museum (2019)

Written by the Hudson River Maritime Museum, Hudson River Lighthouses chronicles all of the Hudson River's historic lighthouses, from Troy, NY to New York Harbor. Includes information about lost lighthouses and early manned navigational lights.

Also available for purchase in the Hudson River Maritime Museum store. All proceeds benefit HRMM.

The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation by Rich Cohen (2019)

An engrossing history of the life and times of Albert Hicks, infamously known as the "last pirate of New York," for his prosecution and execution for piracy in 1860. Rich Cohen links Hicks to the rise of gangsterism in New York City in the latter half of the 19th century. 

The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War by Jonathan Daniel Wells (2020)

Although gradual manumission was implemented in New York starting in 1799, the story of slavery in the state doesn't end there. In this new book, historian Jonathan Daniel Wells chronicles the  New York City officials who sought to circumvent antislavery laws from the 1830s to "the eve of the Civil War" and the small group of dedicated abolitionists who fought to stop them. 

Enterprising Waters: The History and Art of New York's Erie Canal by Brad L. Utter (2020)

The companion publication to the New York State Museum exhibition by the same name, Enterprising Waters chronicles the history of the Erie Canal in New York State. 

The Hudson Valley: The First 250 Million Years: A Mostly Chronological and Occasionally Personal History by David Levine (2020)
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Journalist David Levine covers all 250 million years of Hudson Valley history (or thereabouts) in a series of short historical (and often humorous) essays, on topics from dinosaurs to the present. 

The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage by John Harris (2020)

Published on November 24, 2020, this brand new history chronicles the role of New York City - particularly lower Manhattan - in the illegal slave trade. Harris outlines how the U.S. government turned a blind eye and even aided enslavers in their efforts, despite the illegality of the importation of enslaved Africans at the time. 

The Christmas Tugboat: How the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Came to New York City by George Matteson.
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This delightful children's book tells the story of real-life tugboat captain George Matteson and his daughter as they make their way down the Hudson River with the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in tow. 

River of Dreams: The Story of the Hudson River by Hudson Talbott. 

This beautifully illustrated children's book chronicles the history of the Hudson River from pre-contact Indigenous history all the way through the exciting 19th century, as told through the dreams of a boy named Hudson. 

Picturing America: Thomas Cole and the Birth of American Art by Hudson Talbott

In his follow-up to River of Dreams, Talbott chronicles the life of Thomas Cole and his relationship to the Catskills in this beautifully illustrated book about the birth of the Hudson River School of Art. 

There are a number of fascinating new history books being published in 2021, so keep your eyes peeled for another post with that list. In the meantime, Happy Holidays and happy reading!

​If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!​

If ever a man loved a river, Robert Hamilton Boyle Jr. loved the Hudson — and he was not afraid to shout his love from the rooftops. In his classic text, The Hudson River: a Natural and Unnatural History (1969), Boyle makes his feelings abundantly clear with the book’s very first line. “To those who know it,” wrote Boyle, “the Hudson River is the most beautiful, messed up, productive, ignored and surprising piece of water on the face of the earth. There is no other river quite like it, and for some persons, myself included, no other river will do. The Hudson is the river.”

Gratifyingly, Boyle’s love for the Hudson was not merely a historic/scientific scholarly interest. Yes, Boyle studied the Hudson obsessively, but he did more than passively analyze his favorite waterway. He actively fought to save the river in its darkest hour, when pollution had reduced the Hudson to a shell of its former self. In his decades-long conservationist crusade, Boyle wrote watershed exposes, discovered crucial legal strategies, and founded a seminal environmental organization. Not bad for blue-collar “Brooklyn-born sportswriter and angler.” By the end of his life, Boyle — the down-to-earth fisherman — had become “the unofficial guardian of the Hudson River.”

All that being said, a question remains. How did Boyle come to be so fascinated by the Hudson River? Why did he want to save it so badly? By all accounts, Bob Boyle grew to love the Hudson during his 1940s boyhood boarding school years, when he spent his days off fishing by the (then relatively clean) riverside. When he moved to Croton-on-Hudson in 1960, Boyle was treated to a rude awakening. Instead of the semi-healthy river of his youth, Boyle found a waterway this close to clinically dead. Pollution, of both chemical and human waste varieties, had progressed to intolerable levels. In addition to being a health hazard to humans, the river’s once abundant flora and fauna were mysteriously dying out. Boyle, ever the fisherman, would not stand for that sort of thing. He decided to take up arms and go to war for the Hudson. His weapon of choice? A pen.

To reiterate an old cliché, a picture is worth a thousand words. Bob Boyle clearly took that message to heart. In his historic 1965 Sports Illustrated article, “A Stink of Dead Stripers,” Boyle began with a simple command: “Take a good look at the picture below.” The picture in question revealed a thousand-strong pile of striped bass “left to rot” at a dump. Even without context, a discarded fish-kill of that size looked, well, fishy. Bob Boyle thought so too — and he knew just who to blame. The culprit, in Boyle’s (ultimately correct) opinion, was the Consolidated Edison Company.  The exact circumstances of the kill were not exactly clear — “but the fish apparently were attracted by warm water discharged from the plant and then were trapped beneath a dock.” Concerned citizens took pictures of these massive fish kills and submitted them to the New York State Conservation Department — which later “denied that such pictures existed” when questioned by Boyle. Of course, Boyle did eventually manage to get ahold of those pictures. Their publication, in conjunction with the scathing Sports Illustrated article, was the opening salvo in Boyle’s war against Consolidated Edison. From the start, one fact was crystal clear: Boyle wasn’t going to pull any punches. 

In 1962, Consolidated Edison announced plans for a new hydroelectric power station, plans which had local fisherman and conservationists up in arms. The company hoped to carve a facility out of Storm King Mountain, a site renowned for its scenic beauty. Locals were, understandably, a little horrified by this scheme. The proposed power plant would obviously mar the landscape — and it probably wouldn’t do the river’s fish population much good either. Bob Boyle suspected that Con Ed’s “water-intake equipment would kill small fish,” decimating the population of his beloved striped bass. In 1965, Boyle joined a number of conservation groups (including Scenic Hudson, one of New York’s most enduring non-for-profit organizations) in a “lawsuit against a proposed Consolidated Edison power plant.” It was not an easy fight, but, after many years of legal battle, the conservationists’ efforts bore fruit.

The lawsuit, entitled Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, resulted in “the first federal court ruling affirming the right of citizens to mount challenges on the basis of potential harm to aesthetic, recreational or conservational values as well as tangible economic injury.” It was, in every respect, a game changer and the true beginning of the modern environmental movement. And what was the crucial keystone of Scenic Hudson’s case? Scientific studies on the Hudson’s striped bass population, which would have, as Boyle predicted, been decimated by Con Ed’s plant.

After the Battle of Storm King had been won, Boyle did not choose to sit back and bask in his victory. No, he knew that work still had to be done. The river remained a polluted mess. By preventing the creation of Con Ed’s power plant, Boyle had only fulfilled the physician’s doctrine: “First, do no harm.” The Hudson still needed a thorough cleaning and a dedicated protector, a watchdog to scare the polluters away. To that end, Boyle began to conceive of a plan. He imagined a sort of ‘river keeper,’ a naturalist/conservationist “out on the river the length of the year.” This riverkeeper would keep watch on the river, sniffing out polluters and bringing them to task. What’s more, the riverkeeper would not act alone. They would have an entire organization behind them — an organization with real teeth. Boyle already had already founded just such an organization, the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, in 1966. 

In 1983, the Fishermen’s Association evolved into ‘Riverkeeper,’ a non-for-profit environmental organization dedicated to the protection of the Hudson. But what about the organization’s aforementioned teeth? Well, Boyle had discovered, years earlier, a pair of 19th century laws (the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and the New York Harbor Act of 1888) which banned the “release of pollutants in the nation’s (and the state’s) waterways.” Furthermore, the two Acts allowed “citizens to sue polluters and collect a bounty.”

Luckily, the laws still held in the modern era. Bob Boyle and the Fishermen’s Association tested out their legal strategy against the Penn Central Railroad, and were able to stop a “pipe spewing oil from the Croton Rail Yard” and collect “$2,000 in fines, the first bounty awarded under the 19th-century law.” The bounty money was then repurposed to underwrite suits against other polluters. Riverkeeper wisely kept this legal strategy. All in all, it was an admirably self-sustaining system.

Eventually, Riverkeeper evolved past the Hudson River. It became a model for others around the world, a part of the “Waterkeeper alliance.” Today, the Waterkeeper organization “unites more than 300 Waterkeeper Organizations and Affiliates that are on the front lines of the global water crisis, patrolling and protecting more than 2.5 million square miles of rivers, lakes and coastal waterways on six continents.”14 The individual waterkeepers work with local communities, enforce environmental laws, track down polluters and educate children about the environment. They are watchful protectors, just as Bob Boyle intended.

Although his main contribution to the environmental movement was undoubtedly Riverkeeper, Boyle never gave up and grew tired of his favorite river. He certainly never gave up fishing for his beloved striped bass. After all, Boyle is the man who once wrote: “There may be more stripers in the Hudson than there are people in New York State. I often find this a cheering thought.” Boyle was, in life and in print, down-to-earth, passionate, and adventurous — with a wryly sardonic sense of humor. He lived a life rich in meaning, a life he could be proud of. Case in point: Boyle once predicted that the Hudson would become “either ‘clean and wholesome’ or ‘bereft of the larger forms of life.’” Before he died on May 19th, 2017, Robert H. Boyle could be sure of two things:
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1) the river had “gone the better way” and
2) he had played a small but crucial part in its salvation.

It just goes to show. Everyone is capable of making a difference, if they only have the courage to try

​​This article was originally published in the 2019 issue of the Pilot Log. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!

Most people familiar with CLEARWATER know the sloop was the brainchild of the late American folk legend and activist Pete Seeger. Pete was an idealist and an optimist. He once wrote, “There is a little Don Quixote in all of us.” You couldn’t tell him something couldn’t be done. But when you take a closer look at CLEARWATER’s story, it’s a miracle the boat was ever built at all.

At the time CLEARWATER was built, the “tall ship revival” was still a decade or two away. Yes, the first Operation Sail brought tall ships from around the world to New York Harbor in 1964, but no one was building new tall ships with one or two exceptions. There were vessels built that were replicas of specific ships, such as the MAYFLOWER II, launched in 1956, and the HMS BOUNTY, launched in 1962 and built specifically for the filming of Mutiny on the Bounty. But to form a new not-for-profit to build a replica of a type of ship -- not even a famous historic ship? Nobody was doing that. Seeger and the fledgling Clearwater organization were ahead of the curve.

When Pete got interested in sailing and subsequently in Hudson River sloops -- the traditional cargo-carrying sailing vessels of the Hudson -- he got an idea. Maybe you could build a vessel that was so grand, so extraordinary, and one that had not sailed the river in a very long time, and maybe you could draw people down to the banks of a river that had long ago been forsaken. Pete saw potential where others did not and believed that if CLEARWATER could bring people to the river, then maybe it could help people to “love their river again.”

The challenges that the Clearwater organization faced were many. First and foremast, perhaps, was the fact that it was the 1960s. Pete Seeger had been blacklisted, and the Vietnam War was raging and becoming increasingly unpopular. So unpopular that President Lyndon B. Johnson declared in a nationally televised address in March 1968 that he would not run for re-election. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April of that year, sparking riots in over 100 American cities. Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June. In August, there were violent clashes between police and protesters in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention.

Years later, in recounting the early days of the sloop project, Pete would write:
It really seemed a frivolous idea. The world was full of agony; the Vietnam War was heating up. Money was needed for all sorts of life-and-death matters, and here we were raising money to build a sailboat.

It wasn’t just a turbulent civil and political climate, however, that made building CLEARWATER a challenge. There hadn’t been a Hudson River sloop built in over 100 years, and there were none left afloat. 

Pete’s inspiration for building a Hudson River sloop came in 1963 after his friend Vic Schwarz loaned him a copy of the 1908 book Sloops of the Hudson, written by William Verplanck and Moses Collyer, two retired sloop captains. He read it through in one night. Some time elapsed before Pete wrote his friend a five-page letter, which started:

"One way to see if a pipe dream has any practicality is to get it down on paper. So I’m writing you now with the most grandiose and ambitious plan. It will make our wives groan. It will probably never get beyond the paper stage, but here goes:"

He wrote the letter and then forgot about it. It was September 1965. Vic did not forget the letter and began chatting up fellow commuters on the train to New York. That fall, Vic called up Pete and asked, “When are we going to start building that sloop?” Pete answered, “You must be kidding!”

Much of what we know about how the rest of the story unfolded is because in the 1960s people actually wrote letters and saved them. They also often saved carbon copies. Postage was inexpensive and long distance phone calls were most definitely not. After making a foray into the library at Mystic Seaport, Pete wrote a letter that December to Joel White, a boat designer and builder.

Joel was the son of the writer E. B. White and had a boatyard in Brooklin, Maine. White wrote back, telling Pete his shop was too small to build a boat that big, and he was too busy to do any design work. He did recommend naval architect Cyrus Hamlin of Southwest Harbor, Maine. “He is a fine architect, and I am sure you would like him,” Joel wrote.

The following month -- January 1966 -- Pete and Vic met with Cyrus Hamlin at the National Boat Show in New York City. Pete and Cy hit it off. Cy sent a formal letter to Pete in February, outlining his estimate for the cost of construction and a quotation for his design fee based on the estimate. In April, Pete wrote Cy a $500 personal check to cover the naval architect’s “advance research” on the Hudson River sloop.

Pete’s initial vision, as outlined in his letter to Vic, was for the sloop to be something like a floating timeshare. Off the top of his head, he estimated that a 55-foot sloop might cost $100,000 to build. That was more money than he and Vic could scrape together, so he suggested that they try to form “Hudson River Sloop Clubs” up and down the river. If there were 10 clubs, then each would have to raise $10,000 to build the vessel, and each club could sail the sloop for a week at a time.

Eventually, as we know, a non-profit formed. The Hudson River Sloop Restoration incorporated in September 1966. Interestingly enough, nowhere in the Articles of Incorporation is there any mention of the organization having an environmental purpose. Instead, the document states the purpose as:

"To acquaint people with matters relating to our cultural heritage; and to maintain and promote interest in the history of the Hudson River both as a commercial and pleasure artery; and in connection therewith to build, own, operate and exhibit replicas of the great sloops which once freely navigated the river, thereby generating a greater interest in our cultural heritage and an understanding of the contributions made to our culture and commerce by the river and the sloops which sailed it."

Also interesting is that multiple sloops are suggested and that there is no mention of actually sailing with passengers. 

Whether or not the sloop could be classified as a “yacht” or would have to be classified as a “passenger-carrying vessel,” making it subject to United States Coast Guard regulations and inspection, was an important determination that had to be made. Having to comply with USCG regulations would make the sloop more expensive to build and operate. It would also mean that it could not be an historically accurate replica, and perhaps not even a very good-looking one.

At issue was the tragic sinking of the Brigantine ALBATROSS in 1961. A “school ship” carrying 13 American teenagers and five crew members went down in a sudden squall in the Gulf of Mexico. Six lives were lost, including four of the students. Although the ship was Panamanian registered, the USCG investigated the accident. Additional analysis resulted in the publication of On the Stability of Sailing Vessels by USCG officers John G. Beebe-Center and Richard B. Brooks in 1966. This work questioned the reliability of traditional stability assessment techniques for sailing vessels and would result in the adoption of more stringent USCG stability criteria.

While the Maine fleet of “windjammer” schooners had been grandfathered when it came to stability requirements, new vessels would now come under additional scrutiny because of the ALBATROSS, even those built prior to the publication of the Beebe-Center & Brooks paper. The schooner MARY DAY, built for the charter trade by Harvey Gamage and launched in 1962, somehow sailed beneath the Coast Guard’s radar. This was not the case for the topsail schooner SHENANDOAH, also built for the charter trade by Gamage and launched in 1964. Because SHENANDOAH did not satisfy the Coast Guard’s stability requirements, the schooner’s owner was not allowed to charge his passengers any fee for its entire first season. The following year, Capt. Bob Douglas was able to obtain a conditional stability letter.

Cy retained a Boston-based attorney in the spring of 1966 on behalf of Pete and the “sloop committee” to help facilitate a dialogue with the Coast Guard and explore various possibilities for the future vessel’s operation. Not coincidentally, Douglas had used this same attorney for his legal troubles. One option that was explored was to form a cooperative, wherein all the members of the cooperative would be considered “shareholders” and thereby owners of the vessel. The Coast Guard rejected this approach. Ultimately, Cy convinced HRSR to build their sloop to meet Coast Guard regulations, very likely the very first sailing vessel built to meet the new, more onerous stability requirements. This was not until as late as May or June of 1968, and there was still no plan to actually carry paying passengers.

When, exactly, Pete realized that the sloop could be a tool to help clean up the river, we don’t know. However, in a New York Times article written following the organization’s first major fundraiser on October 2, 1966, he is quoted as follows:
"Some people might think it’s the most frivolous thing in the world to raise money for a sailboat. But we want people to love the Hudson, not think of it as a convenient sewer."

Despite Pete’s “green” inclinations, clearly many people within the organization were solely interested in maritime history and had no interest in being standard-bearers for the environmental movement. This is reflected in the results of a membership vote to name the sloop in March of 1969. There were 44 names nominated. Some of them were pretty silly, such as GREASY LUCK and SEWER RAT. In the end, the name CLEARWATER narrowly edged out HERITAGE, with HOPE OF THE HUDSON placing third.

While there may not have been existing Hudson River sloops for Cy to study, he was able to research the vessel through builders’ half-hull models, periodicals and reference works, including John W. Griffith’s Treatise on Marine and Naval Architecture, published in 1850, and Lauchlan McKay’s The Practical Shipbuilder, published in 1839. He gleaned information about rigging details through paintings, period photographs and even a placemat or two that he discovered in a gift shop. He also had access to photos and drawings from Howard Chapelle, the great American naval architect and maritime historian, who was then a senior historian at the Smithsonian Institution. “Chap” provided Cy with the lines of the 1848 sloop VICTORINE and two others.

Ultimately, Pete and company decided their sloop should measure approximately 75 feet long as this would allow for more headroom below decks. Cy presented preliminary drawings at the organization’s annual membership meeting on November 5, 1967.

By late January of 1968, Cy had performed the necessary work to put the sloop project out to bid. He sent bidding documents to at least three yards in Maine and three in New York, including Rondout Marine. Cy also inquired with at least two yards overseas – one in Spain and another in Yugoslavia – where he had connections. Soliciting a bid from a foreign yard was not his idea. The organization thought that a foreign-built vessel might be less expensive. So Cy also agreed to look into shipyards in Nova Scotia. It was his opinion however that “the desirability of a yard is probably inversely proportional to the distance from the United States.” In the end, Harvey F. Gamage, Shipbuilder, Inc. of South Bristol, Maine came in with the lowest bid of those yards that submitted bids -- there is no evidence that any foreign yard did -- and was awarded the contract.

Construction of the sloop began in August 1968. There was a keel-laying ceremony at the shipyard on October 18 attended by about 50 HRSR members. Toshi Seeger anointed the length of the sloop’s keel with Hudson River water, and Pete led everyone in song. After two-years of recruiting new members and vigorous fundraising, there was finally something concrete to celebrate. Over the next several months, however, a lot more money still needed to be raised. Approximately 200 guests attended a special fundraiser hosted by Mr. & Mrs. Steven Rockefeller at the Rockefeller Farm Barn at Pocantico Hills in November. There were informational meetings and slide show presentations at rotary clubs, libraries and coffee houses. Numerous concerts were held, including a sold out performance at Carnegie Hall in April 1969.

Three larger gifts -- $10,000 each -- came from the Boscobel Restoration, Inc., the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund, and the Rockefeller Family Fund.

On May 17, a crowd of about 2,500 gathered at the shipyard. People packed inside the boatshed to hear speeches and celebrate the occasion with song. At approximately 12:30 PM -- high tide -- Clearwater slid down the marine railway and into the waters of a quiet cove alongside the Damariscotta River. The schooner BOWDOIN was in attendance, as was Maine’s governor, Kenneth Curtis. It was a belated birthday present for Pete, who had turned 50 precisely two weeks earlier.

Over the course of the next six weeks, the ship’s crew got busy rigging, fitting out, and provisioning the vessel. There were sea trials and Coast Guard inspections. But before the sloop could leave South Bristol, the shipbuilder needed to be paid in full. In the days before the sloop set sail, Toshi Seeger frantically called up a number of friends -- people she and Pete knew from the folk music world -- to secure personal loans to pay the bill. The Newport Folk Festival loaned the organization $10,000. The Seegers chipped in another $7,000.

Finally, on June 27, the sloop set sail for Portland, the first stop on its journey. One of the plans to raise money was to give a series of concerts at various ports-of-call between Maine and New York on the sloop’s maiden voyage. To this end, most of the sailing crew was made up of musician friends of Pete’s. Billed as the “Hudson River Sloop Singers,” the group included Pete, Capt. Allan Aunapu, Louis Killen, Gordon Bok, Don McLean, Jimmy Collier, Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and others. They made about 20 appearances including at The Fens in Boston and the Newport Folk Festival. The money raised made it possible to begin to repay those loans.

On August 1, 1969, CLEARWATER tied up at South Street Seaport to much fanfare and with New York City Mayor John Lindsay onboard. What had started as a “pipe dream” nearly four years earlier was now a reality. A Hudson River sloop would be sailing the river once again.

Fifty years later, CLEARWATER is still sailing. From on board, hundreds of thousands of school children -- and group sail participants of all ages -- have experienced the beauty and wonder of the Hudson River ecosystem. CLEARWATER’S award-winning education program has provided a model for organizations around the country, and the sloop remains a powerful symbol in the fight for clean water and a healthier, greener planet.

​This article was originally published in the 2019 issue of the Pilot Log. ​If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!​​​​

​Last week, we discussed the impacts of cholera and yellow fever on Rondout in the 1830s and ‘40s, but New York City underwent similar epidemics throughout the early 19th century. At the same time, rising population in New York City, as well as efforts to fill in its brackish wetlands and shorelines, was creating a problem with the water table and pollution. Fresh drinking water was becoming more and more scarce in the growing city and natural water sources were increasingly contaminated by sewage and industrial wastes. 

Enter a pie-in-the-sky idea for yet another enormous engineering marvel (New York’s canals being the previous pipedreams turned reality) – the Croton Aqueduct. The idea was simple – pipe clean water from the relatively unspoiled Croton River through gravity-fed aqueducts to New York City. Aqueducts were certainly not a new idea – the Romans had invented them, after all – but to construct something on this scale was a rather startling idea.

Following the cholera epidemic of 1832, Major David Bates Douglass, an engineering professor at West Point and one of a new school of civil engineers, surveyed the proposed route in 1833. Bates was an excellent surveyor, but had proposed no practical plans for physical structures, and so was fired in 1835.
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As early as 1835, before construction even began, the project was gaining national attention. An article from the Alexandria Gazette (Richmond, VA) from December 25, 1835 discussed the plan, writing, “In carrying into effect the contemplated plan of supplying the City of New York with water from the Croton River, an aqueduct, we believe, is necessary across one of the rivers. If this is so, the experience gained to that city and the county in submarine architecture, by the works now going on at the Potomac Aqueduct in connexion with the Alexandria Canal, will be invaluable.” 

​December, 1835 gave New York City another reason to want abundant supplies of water – the Great Fire of New York of 1835 wiped out most of New York City and bankrupted all but three of its fire insurance companies. The fire would spur a number of reforms, including an end to wooden buildings (a boon for the Hudson Valley’s brick, cement, and bluestone industries). But many wondered, had the aqueduct already been in place, if more of the city would have been saved.

John B. Jervis, who cut his teeth on the construction of the Erie, D&H, and Chenango canals as well as early railroads, became Chief Engineer on the Croton Aqueduct project in 1836, and construction began the following year.
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The Croton River was dammed and thousands of laborers, many of them Irish, commenced digging tunnels by hand and lining them with brick. On August 22, 1838, the Vermont Telegraph published a good description of the work: “The Aqueduct which is to bring Croton river water into the city of New York, will be 40 miles long. It will have an unvarying ascent from the starting point, eight miles above Sing Sing to Harlem Heights, where it comes out at 114 feet above high water mark. A great army of men are now at work along the line, and at many points the aqueduct is completed. The bottom is an inverted arch of brick; the sides are laid with hewn stone in cement, then plastered on the inside, and then within the plaster a four inch brick wall is carried up to the stone wall, and thence the top is formed with an arch of double brick work. It will stand for ages a monument of the enterprise of the present generation.” 

On November 11, 1838, a newspaper in Liberty, Mississippi reported on a bricklaying contest – “In a match at brick-laying in a part of the arch of the Croton Aqueduct, between Nicholson, a young man of Connecticut, and Neagle, of Philadelphia, the latter was a head when his strength gave way, having laid 3,700 bricks in 5 ½ hours. Nicholson continued a half hour longer, when he had laid 5,350. The work was capitally done.”

On September 12 of that same year, the Alexandria Gazette chimed in again, noting, “There are full four thousand men employed on the line of the Croton Aqueduct, which is to supply the city of New York with pure and wholesome water. About six of the sections will be completed this fall. The commissioners will now proceed to contract for the ‘Low Bridge’ across the Harlem river, according to the original plan. The whole, when finished, will be the most magnificent work in the United States.” 

The Low Bridge the Gazette referred to was originally planned to go under the Harlem River, but this was quickly abandoned. Instead, what is now known as the High Bridge was constructed in stone – its arched support pillars strongly reminiscent of Roman aqueducts. High Bridge was designed by Chief Engineer John B. Jervis and completed in 1848. It remains the oldest bridge in New York City.

Indeed, the High Bridge and the whole aqueduct warranted a lengthy newspaper article – almost the whole page – August 27, 1839 edition of the New York Morning Herald. Cataloging the extant Roman aqueducts around the world, defining the difference between an aqueduct and a viaduct (aqueducts carry water across water – viaducts carry water across roads), and in all comparing the Croton Aqueduct, and especially the High Bridge, quite favorably to all its predecessors.

But not all was well in construction. The Morning Herald wrote extensively of the aqueduct again on September 4, 1839 claiming, “owing to the gross mismanagement that has prevailed in the office of the water commissioners, the expense of the work has been twice as much as it ought to have been, and after all it will be very defective in many of its most important points; and independent of the immense trouble and the large sums of money that will perpetually be required to keep the whole of it in repair, we have not the least doubt that, when the work comes to be proved by passing a large body of water through it, at least one-sixth part of it will have to be pulled down and rebuilt.”

The article continues on in that vein for quite some time – the principal complaint besides cost being that, unlike the Romans (who also used better quality brick and cement), the Croton Aqueduct would be largely hidden from sight, and the iron pipes would “burst upon the first pressure,” claiming that the commissioners “wanted to oblige some friend who was an iron founder, and to give him a fat contract, by which he could get rid of a quantity of old metal.”

Of course, the editor of the Morning Herald seemed to have ulterior motives, as he negatively connected the Croton Aqueduct with President Martin Van Buren’s campaign for reelection in July of that year, and blamed politicking for the delays and purported graft. He also seemed to hold a grudge – the Morning Herald reported endlessly about the aqueduct, but also about purported mismanagement. No other newspaper from the era reported similar claims. However, an article in the Richmond Gazette (Richmond, VA) from July 28, 1842, does hint at the enormous cost of the project, but brings up the 1835 fire and its enormous cost as a justification for the price.

At 5 A.M. on June 22, 1842, water began flowing through the Croton Aqueduct. The water commissioners, aboard the small vessel the Croton Maid of Croton Lake, went with it. The 16 foot long, four-person barge was especially built to traverse the tunnels and continued until High Bridge, which was not yet completed. On June 27, the Croton Maid was carried across the river and the commissioners continued back into the aqueduct, arriving at the York Hill Reservoir to a 38 artillery gun salute.

The following day, the Board of Water Commissioners submitted a report to Robert H. Morris, the Mayor of New York City. It was printed in the New York Herald on June 25, 1842.

“SIR – The Board of Water Commissioners have the honor to Report, that on Wednesday, the twenty second instant, they opened the gates of the Croton Aqueduct at its mouth, on the Croton Lake, at 5 o’clock in the morning, giving it a volume of water of 18 inches in depth.

“The Commissioners, with their Chief and Principal Assistant Engineers, accompanied the water down, sometimes in their barge, ‘the Croton Maid of Croton Lake,’ and sometimes on the surface of the Aqueduct above.
“We found that the water arrived at the waste gates at Sing Sing, a distance of 8 miles in 5 hours and 48 minutes: here we suffered the water to flow out at the waste gates until 12 o’clock, M., when the gates were closed on a volume of about 2 feet in depth. The water then flowed on and arrived at Mill River waste gates at a quarter past 3 o’clock, a distance of 5 miles.

“It was there drawn off through the waste gates for half an hour, and was, at a quarter before 4 o’clock, allowed to flow on. We continued to precede it on land, and to accompany it in our boat, in the aqueduct, to Yonkers, a distance of 10 miles, where it arrived at half past 10 o’clock at night. Here we permitted it to flow at this waste gate until a quarter past 5 o’clock in the morning, when the waste gates were closed, and it flowed on and arrived at the waste gate on the Van Courtlandt farm, a distance of five miles and a half, in three hours and a quarter. Here we permitted it to flow out of the waste gates for two hours when the gates were closed, and it flowed, in two hours and twenty minutes, a distance of about four miles and three quarters, down to the Harlem river, where the Commissioners and their Chief Engineer emerged to the surface of the earth in their subterranean barge at 1 o’clock, June 23d.

“The average current or flow of the water has been thus proved to be forty-five minutes to the mile, a velocity greater, we are happy to say, than the calculations gave reason to expect.

“It is with great satisfaction we have to report, that the work at the dam, on the line of aqueduct proper, the waste gates and all the appendages of this great work, so far as tried by this performance, have been found to answer most perfectly the objects of their construction.

“In conclusion, we congratulate the Common Council of the city, and our fellow citizens, at the apparent success of this magnificent undertaking, designed not for show, nor for luxury, nor for glory; but for health, security against fire, comfort, temperance [note: a reference to the habit of mixing New York water with alcohol to make it safe and palatable to drink] and enjoyment of our whole population – objects worth of a community of virtuous freemen.

“With great respect, we remain, your obedient servants, Samuel Stevens, John D. Ward, Z. Ring, B. Birdsall.
​
“P.S. – We expect the water will be admitted into the Northern Division of the Receiving Reservoir on Monday next, at half-past 4 o’clock, P.M. at which time and place we shall be happy to see yourself and the other members of the Common Council.”

In fact, the water did not begin to fill the Manhattan reservoirs until July 4, 1842. The official celebration was reserved for October 14, 1842. The New York Herald reported the following day, “The celebration commenced at daylight with the roar of one hundred cannon, and all the fountains in the city immediate began to send forth the limpid stream of the Croton. Soon after this, the joyous bells from a hundred steeples pealed forth their merry notes to usher in the subsequent scenes. At and before this moment, over half a million of souls leaped simultaneously from their slumbers and their beds, and dressed themselves as for a gladsome gala day – a general jubilee.”

Workers were given the day off and an enormous parade, with representatives from every official organization in the city followed, ending at City Hall Park, where an enormous fountain was flowing. Again, the New York Herald, “For several days previous, thousands of strangers had been pouring into the city from all parts of the country, to see and join in the procession, until there must have been at least 200,000 strangers in the city, making an aggregate with the resident inhabitants of half a million of souls congregated in our streets.”

The opening of the Croton Aqueduct marked a period of transformation for New York City. Already one of the most important port cities in the nation, the abundance of clean water meant that urban and industrial growth could continue apace. The aqueduct was expanded several times, but in 1885 the “New Croton Aqueduct” was constructed. The Old Croton Aqueduct continued to be used until the 1950s, and is today a park – many of its old aqueduct bridges are now pedestrian bridges, as had been suggested during their original construction. The New Croton Aqueduct is still in use, still bringing Croton River water to New York City.

​If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!​

It's Earth Day Week here at the Hudson River Maritime Museum, so of course we have to celebrate Music Monday with that quintessential Hudson River Song, "My Dirty Stream" by Pete Seeger. Also known as "The Hudson River Song," Pete wrote this song for the album "God Bless the Grass," released in 1982. The whole album has an environmental theme, and "My Dirty Stream" in particular was designed to raise awareness not only of the pollution of the Hudson River, but also about the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which Pete founded in 1964. 

"My Dirty Stream (The Hudson River Song)" Lyrics
​Sailing down my dirty stream
Still I love it and I'll keep the dream
That some day, though maybe not this year
My Hudson River will once again run clear

It starts high in the mountains of the north
Crystal clear and icy trickles forth
With just a few floating wrappers of chewing gum
Dropped by some hikers to warn of things to come

At Glens Falls, five thousand honest hands
Work at the consolidated paper plant
Five million gallons of waste a day
Why should we do it any other way?

Down the valley one million toilet chains
Find my Hudson so convenient place to drain
And each little city says, "Who, me?
Do you think that sewage plants come free?"

Out in the ocean they say the water's clear
But I live right at Beacon here
Half way between the mountains and sea
Tacking to and fro, this thought returns to me

Well it's Sailing up my dirty stream
Still I love it and I'll dream
That some day, though maybe not this year
My Hudson and my country will run clear.


When was the first time you heard "My Dirty Stream?" Did you ever hear Pete live in concert? Share your thoughts in the comments!

If you'd like to learn more about the construction of the sloop Clearwater, the role of Pete and the Sloop Singers in the passage of the Clean Water Act, and more, visit our online exhibit, "Rescuing the River: 50 Years of Environmental Activism on the Hudson." 

​Thanks to HRMM volunteer Mark Heller for sharing his knowledge of Hudson River music history for this series.

​If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!​

In March 1966, a small group of recreational and commercial fishermen, concerned citizens and scientists met at a Crotonville American Legion Hall intending to reverse the decline of the Hudson River by reclaiming it from polluters. With them was Robert H. Boyle, an angler and senior writer at Sports Illustrated, who was outraged by the reckless abuse endured by the river. 

At the group’s initial meeting, Boyle announced that he had stumbled across two forgotten laws: The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1888 and The Refuse Act of 1899. These laws forbade pollution of navigable waters in the U.S., imposed fines for polluters, and provided a bounty reward for whoever reported the violation. After listening to Boyle speak, the blue-collar audience agreed to organize as the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, and dedicate themselves to tracking down the river’s polluters and bringing them to justice.

Right from the start, the grassroots actions taken by the fishermen went against convention. While many organizations sought environmental justice through protests and civil disobedience, the HRFA sought to protect the Hudson through advocacy and law enforcement. At the group’s core was a belief that everyday people should be able to defend our public resources from maltreatment and damage. The Fishermen’s actions to protect the communal watershed quality showed that ordinary citizens had legal standing in protecting our natural resources.

The Fishermen were as good as their word. Their first target was Penn Central Railroad, which for years released petroleum products into the Croton River, a Hudson tributary. HRFA informed the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Attorney, calling on enforcement of The Refuse Act, but were ignored. So the HRFA took the law into their own hands: they sued Penn Central, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Secretary of the Army. This caught the attention of the U.S. Attorney's office, which then joined the HRFA in its suit against Penn Central. The HRFA prevailed, and the fine provided the first bounty afforded to a private organization from a polluter.

Emboldened, the HRFA distributed thousands of copies of “Bag a Polluter” postcards for citizen whistleblowers to fill in and to mail back to the organization. Soon, they were collecting even larger bounties against polluters such as Anaconda Wire and Copper, Standard Brands, Ciba-Geigy, American Cyanamid, and Westchester County. The Fishermen also joined with Scenic Hudson to stop Con Ed’s proposed hydroelectric plant on the face of Storm King Mountain. It was, in large part, the discovery of a striped bass spawning ground near the proposed site that ultimately prevented the building of the facility.

These victories provided new funding to expand HRFA influence along the Hudson. Meanwhile Boyle — inspired by the British tradition of posting ''riverkeepers'' on private trout and salmon streams — envisioned doing the same thing for the Hudson and called for someone who would be “on the river the length of the year, nailing polluters on the spot...giving a sense of time, place and purpose to people who live in or visit the valley.” Boyle found his first full-time Riverkeeper in John Cronin, a commercial fishermen and activist, in 1983 and the HRFA built the first Riverkeeper patrol boat that same year.

Soon after, acting on a tip from a New York State Trooper, Cronin learned that Exxon tankers were flushing out jet fuel residue and filling up with river water to take to an Exxon refinery. Cronin collected data and evidence. His proof was so thorough that Exxon had little choice but to settle, paying $1.5 million to New York State for a private river management fund and $500,000 to HRFA.

HRFA merged with its growing Riverkeeper program in 1986 to form one group to protect the river.  Since then, Riverkeeper has brought hundreds of polluters to justice and forced them to spend hundreds of millions of dollars remediating the Hudson.

In 1997, Riverkeeper negotiated the $1.5 billion New York City Watershed Memorandum of Agreement on behalf of upstate communities, environmentalists, and New York City watershed consumers. It is regarded as an international model in stakeholder consensus negotiations and sustainable development.

In recent years, Riverkeeper has helped to get Endangered Species Act protection for Atlantic Sturgeon and new fishing regulations for herring. The organization also campaigned to ban fracking in New York State in 2014.

Riverkeeper began sampling the Hudson in 2006, and in 2008 started our full-estuary sampling project, in partnership with CUNY Queens College and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Today, this program aims to improve the water quality of the Hudson and its tributaries through increased water quality monitoring and public notification, consistent investment in wastewater and stormwater infrastructure and better water quality policies.

In 2018, nearly 50 organizations and 180 individuals partnered to collect 5,400 samples. The data Riverkeeper has gathered since establishing our estuary monitoring program have illuminated some of the river’s challenges. Riverkeeper has identified where wastewater infrastructure is failing and seen investments pay off in improved water quality, and defined critical baseline information about the presence of pharmaceuticals, pesticides and other trace contaminants.

In January 2017, Riverkeeper reached an agreement with New York State and Entergy for the shutdown of the two aging nuclear reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center. Riverkeeper fought this decades-long battle to close this aging and unreliable nuclear plant with laws that protect the fish. When the Indian Point closes in 2021, its cooling intakes will power down and this will save a billion river creatures from destruction each year. We continue to work to ensure that Indian Point’s closure and decommissioning are done right and community interests are addressed.

Today, Riverkeeper is renewing its commitment to “A Living River,” our priority is to give the Hudson its life back. Fish such as the Atlantic sturgeon, American shad and striped bass — three iconic Hudson River species — are among many that remain endangered or in decline. We cannot be content with protecting these dwindling populations.

One way Riverkeeper is working to restore life in the Hudson is by removing obsolete dams along the creeks and streams that nourish the river. These dams not only block fish from their historical spawning grounds, but trap sediments, nutrients and minerals vital to the food web. We have secured written agreements for the removal of several dams to allow passage of migratory fish, and we’re continuing to reach out to dam owners. And a new film, “Undamming the Hudson,” is helping to keep the issue alive.

On the Mohawk River, we are helping develop the state’s agenda in ways that protect fish. The DEC’s new Mohawk Basin Action Agenda will investigate ways to prevent invasive species from migrating from the Great Lakes, and support a migratory fish passage through the Erie Canal locks and dams, which segment the natural flow.

Riverkeeper is also thick in the battle against ill-conceived storm surge barriers that would choke off the river where the Hudson meets the ocean. Several options considered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would have catastrophic consequences for the river and New York Harbor. Specifically, storm surge barriers – giant ocean gates – would choke off tidal flow and the migration of fish – damaging the life of the Hudson River Estuary forever.

At Riverkeeper’s founding, the river was little more than an open sewer. Thanks to the massive reductions in pollution we’ve helped foster over the past half-century, our vision of a clean, safe and vibrant Hudson is finally within reach. Looking into the future: Riverkeeper will bring the same energy to our ecosystems work that we did to cutting pollution, closing Indian Point and protecting your drinking water, so that the mighty Hudson will brim with life, once again.

​This article was originally published in the 2019 issue of the Pilot Log. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!

On September 22, 1897, Mrs. Edith Gifford boarded a yacht on the Hudson River along with other members of the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs (NJSFWC) and male allies from the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society (ASHPS). The goal of this riverine excursion was to assess the horrible defacement of the Palisades cliffs by quarrymen, who blasted this ancient geological structure for the needs of commerce—specifically, trap rock used to build New York City streets, piers, and the foundations of new skyscrapers. All on board felt that seeing the destruction firsthand, with their own eyes, was the first step in galvanizing support for a campaign to stop the blasting of the cliffs.

The campaign that followed was successful: Women from the NJSFWC lobbied Governor Foster Voorhees, while men from the ASHPS found support in their own Governor Theodore Roosevelt. Their efforts led to the creation of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission (PIPC) in 1900 through an act to "preserve the scenery of the Palisades." Under President George Perkins, the Commission purchased or received successive tracks of land to save the Palisades from quarry operators, resulting in iconic recreational areas such as Bear Mountain State Park. When the Palisades Interstate Park opened in 1909, few could imagine that it would become one of the most popular public parks in the entire nation. A landscape marked by resource extraction became a landscape of recreation, environmental education, and nature appreciation.

The yacht trip characterized the collaborative nature of this critically important conservation story. What brought these groups and others together was not only a shared interest in the value of scenic beauty and recreation, but also a desire to save the trees growing along the base and top of the cliffs—an issue tied to other environmental initiatives at the time, especially the creation of a public park in the Adirondacks to protect the sources of the Hudson River. Women from the NJSFWC, especially Mrs. Edith Gifford, joined leading forestry experts like Gifford Pinchot and Bernhard Fernow in calling for the protection of the Palisades woodlands and other forested areas across New Jersey. Unlike scientific foresters, however, Mrs. Gifford and other women focused on public pedagogy. Through their efforts, the NJSFWC prepared the way for civic education, nature study, and environmental stewardship in Palisades Interstate Park and beyond.

​Seeing the Forest from the Rocks
In the mid-1890s, as people on both sides of the Hudson began advocating for the preservation of the Palisades cliffs, many scientists and politicians were also beginning to recognize the importance of forests to water supplies. The publication of George Perkins Marsh's bestselling book Man and Nature in 1864 generated public discussion of the potentially disastrous consequences of large-scale deforestation: When trees are destroyed, Marsh warned, the ground loses its ability to hold moisture, and the disturbed ground becomes more susceptible to erosion. Deforestation threatened entire watersheds, impacting commerce, navigation, and public water supplies.  His conclusions influenced emerging forestry experts, businessmen, and politicians, ultimately leading to the creation of a Forest Preserve in 1885, Adirondack Park in 1892, and the addition of the “Forever Wild” clause to New York State’s constitution in 1894.

Just as in the Adirondacks, scientific foresters in New Jersey raised concerns about the impact of deforestation on the state’s water supplies. As urban and suburban populations across New Jersey swelled, many felt that preserving water supplies and spaces for recreation was more valuable, and more feasible, than reviving timber revenues. In 1894, the NJ State Legislature ordered that a survey of the state’s forests be included in the State Geological Survey. The survey’s purpose was to determine the possibility of creating a network of forest reserves across the state to satisfy needs for water and recreation. It highlighted how the forests of the Palisades were composed of high quality, old-growth trees, vital to the protection of water supplies in the Hackensack Valley below. The survey also noted the Palisades’ value for future students of forestry. “This beautiful forest,” the report stated, “has almost as good a claim to future preservation as the escarpment of the Palisades.”

The State Forester of New Jersey at the time was Dr. John Gifford, husband of NJSFWC member Mrs. Edith Gifford. Both had been active members of the American Forestry Association and shared a passion for trees. Dr. Gifford was the founding editor of New Jersey Forester, which ultimately became American Forestry, the journal of the U.S. Forest Service. Mrs. Gifford was active in numerous urban reform and environmental campaigns. After the establishment of the NJSFWC in 1894, she worked to bring the issue of forestry into the discourse surrounding the preservation of the Palisades from quarrying. A newspaper report described her this way: “Mrs. Gifford is a New Jersey woman who makes a special study of forestry for the NJSFWC when not engaged in household duties. She can tell you all about the management of European forests…[and] pathetic tales of wanton destruction of beautiful forests in this country.”  In 1896, she was appointed Chair of a new Committee on Forestry and Protection of the Palisades at the NJSFWC.

While scientific foresters focused on reports and surveys, Mrs. Gifford devoted herself to educating the public. At a NJSFWC meeting in 1896, which was attended by numerous state legislators and some of the nation's leading foresters, she showcased a traveling forestry library and exhibition, intended to educate the public, and especially children, about the importance of forests and forestry. The exhibition included contrasting images of ‘pristine’ forests and those ravaged by lumber dealers for economic profit; depictions of trees in art and leaf charts by Graceanna Lewis; maps of New Jersey forests and their connection to the state's geology; portraits of notable trees; and examples of erosion caused by deforestation in France and other European countries. The library consisted of a bookcase made of oak, encased in “a traveling dress of white duck.” Other women’s groups, libraries, and schools across the state could apply for the privilege of hosting it for a month. It included major forestry textbooks of the day, including What is Forestry? by Bernhard Fernow; Franklin Hough’s Elements of Forestry; tree planting manuals; and pamphlets on forestry’s importance to watershed protection and timber supplies.

Sargent attended the meeting and wrote a rave review in his journal, Garden and Forest. Applauding the role of women in increasing public literacy about trees, forests, and forestry, he linked their efforts directly to policy making. "No comprehensive forest policy," he wrote, "can even be devised without a more cultivated public sentiment." The exhibition and traveling forestry library were not merely didactic tools, Sargent explained; they encouraged a sentimental connection between trees and people. The "cultivation of a sympathetic love of trees," for Sargent, was the basis for citizen involvement in forestry, forest preservation, and nature appreciation. “The arrangement of this exhibit," Sargent remarked, "was so effective that it seemed a pity that it must be transient, and the suggestion that every library and schoolroom should have something of this kind…was felt by all who saw it.” In the wake of this meeting, Mrs. Gifford’s traveling forestry library circulated in women’s clubs across the state. Clubs applied for the privilege of hosting the oak bookcase for a month at their own expense and used it to generate public discussion of forestry issues. Explaining the necessity of such a library as well as other forms of outreach—including reading circles and exhibitions—Gifford stressed the centrality of pedagogy to policy making: “Much education is needed to bring about necessary legislation and progressive methods,” she argued.

Going further, Mrs. Gifford took the cause of public education and forestry to the national level. At a General Federation of Women’s Clubs meeting in 1896, of which the New Jersey State Federation was a part, she urged members across the country to take a pledge to forestry by declaring among themselves, “We pledge ourselves to take up the study of forest conditions and resources, and to further the highest interests of our several States in these respects.” Copies of the document were sent out to all 1500 local GFWC clubs as well as the press, augmenting both women’s role in forest protection and public awareness of the problem. The pledge in its entirety was published in her husband's journal, The Forester, shortly afterwards, ensuring widespread media attention.

Mrs. Gifford was not the NJSFWC’s lone forestry advocate. Mrs. Katherine Sauzade, for instance, included the value of the Palisades woodlands in her 1897 speech calling for the preservation of the Palisades. Whereas Mrs. Gifford stressed the importance of healthy forests to healthy waterways, Mrs. Sauzade instead emphasized the role of trees in creating the “wild, rugged character” of their beloved Palisades.  In this instance, trees functioned as part of the scenic beauty of the area; their value was not as parts of an invisible system, but as part of the visual splendor of the place. For Sauzade, destroying the scenic beauty of the trees as well as the cliffs was an attack on civilization itself. “We cannot escape,” she wrote, “the disgrace, nor the just censure of the civilized world if we permit, by further neglect, the continued defacement of these grand cliffs.”

By the time the yacht set sail on the Hudson in September 1897, therefore, forestry was already a dominant interest at the NJSFWC and elsewhere in the state. On deck, watching the blasting of the cliffs of the Palisades at the Carpenter Brother’s quarry, Mrs. Gifford declared that “the forestry interest…exceeds the interest of preserving the bluffs.” Reminding her colleagues of her studies of the Palisades woodlands, she remarked that “in some places, the Palisades look exactly as they did when Hendrick Hudson sailed up the river. That is a very remarkable thing to find a primeval forest near the heart of a great metropolis.” Mrs. Gifford’s statement was supported by Joseph Lamb of the ASHPS, who built one of the first resorts on the Palisades in the 1850s. “The Palisades,” he stated on the yacht, “are perhaps more valuable as woodlands than anything else.” At a national GFWC meeting in 1898, NJSFWC President Cecelia Gaines (later Cecilia Gaines Holland), raised the issue of forestry and the protection of the Palisades once again: “There are utilitarian reasons for the protection of the Palisades,” she told club members. “The valleys at their feet are covered with farms and small towns whose water supplies are drawn from sources in the Palisades. Disturb or remove these sources by blasting and the dwellers below suffer in consequence.”

From Nature Study to Nature Appreciation
Despite the essential role of the NJSFWC in the creation of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission in 1900, women were excluded from the commission itself on the basis of their gender. This, however, did not stop their involvement in Palisades conservation or in forestry more generally. In 1905, GFWC President Lydia Phillips Williams declared in a speech at the American Forestry Congress that “[The GFWC’s] interest in forestry is perhaps as great as that in any department of its work…[forestry committees] are enthusiastically spreading the propaganda for forest reserves and the necessity of irrigation.” By 1912, however, women were excluded once again, this time from the American Forestry Association—the organization that Mrs. Gifford had once been a part. Environmental historian Carolyn Merchant suggests that this shift was due to the full-fledged institutionalization of scientific forestry, which was not accessible to women, or to their opposition to Hetch Hetchy.

With the creation of the PIPC in 1900, interest in protecting the forests of the Palisades for water supplies continued. At the opening ceremony for Palisades Interstate Park in 1909, New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes stated that he hoped that the creation of the park was the first step in “[safeguarding] the Highlands and waters…The entire watershed which lies to the north should be conserved.” George Frederick Kunz, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, echoed this sentiment in his own address. Pointing to the example of the Adirondacks, he said, “It must be borne in mind that without your forests you would have no lakes…until we have reforested our hills, we will not have proper water for this river.”
 
Reforesting the Palisades through tree planting was part of the growth of the park itself. Students at newly created professional forestry programs at Yale and the New York State College of Forestry in Syracuse contributed to this process—in 1916 alone, students planted 700,000 trees. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps managed wooded areas in Palisades Interstate Park, planted trees, and constructed new infrastructure. Forestry students also used the woodlands of the Palisades as a laboratory, studying the area’s vegetation, conducting ecological surveys, and developing forest management plans.

Yet, as Palisades Interstate Park grew, the social and recreational aspects of forestry were stressed more than its importance for water or timber supplies. Given their close proximity to New York City, the value of the Palisades’ woodlands to public welfare and urban reform—key tenets of the Progressive Era—could not be ignored. In 1920, the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse published a bulletin that outlined the value of “recreational forestry” in the Palisades. “The Palisades Interstate Park of New York and New Jersey,” it stated, “on account of its proximity to the American metropolis, is, and should be, dominated by the needs of the people in the vicinity of this great city.” In a section called “Forests versus City Streets,” the author addressed how forestry camps could improve the well-being of New York City’s low-income residents. “Outdoor influences,” he wrote, “…curb and counteract tendencies of other environments which fail to promote the ultimate good of these juvenile elements of society.” He continued, “Impossible it is to estimate the aggregate of all the impressions of associations that stir the dull soul…and influences that prompt to effort and incite nobler living.”
 
Similarly, an ecological survey of Palisades Interstate Park in 1919 included an entire section on “The Relation of Forests and Forestry to Human Welfare.” While the survey began by discussing social forestry initiatives in Palisades Interstate Park, it concluded by addressing the public needs that inspired National Parks: “The moment that recreation…is recognized as a legitimate Forest utility the way is opened for a more intelligent administration of the National Forests. Recreation then takes its proper place along with all other utilities.” Far from city streets, park visitors experienced the wonder of the Palisades woodlands firsthand through excursions and nature study. When they left, they brought back a new appreciation for nature of all kinds.

Mrs. Gifford’s pedagogical mission, therefore, was ultimately realized in the park itself. Few could have predicted in the 1890s how much of an impact the introduction of trees to a campaign to save an ancient geological structure would have. Recognition of the importance of an informed public shaped not only the growth of the park itself, but also the future of environmentalism in the United States.

This article was originally published in the 2019 issue of the Pilot Log. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!