The Hudson River is a 315-mile watercourse that flows from north to south through eastern New York State in the United States. The river begins at Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York. The river flows southward past the state capital at Albany and then eventually forms the boundary between New York City and the U.S. state of New Jersey at its mouth before emptying into Upper New York Bay. Its lower half is a tidal estuary, which occupies the Hudson Fjord. This formed during the most recent North American glaciation over the latter part of the Wisconsin Stage of the Last Glacial Maximum, 26,000 to 13,300 years ago. Tidal waters influence the Hudson's flow as far north as Troy, New York. The river is named after Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, who explored it in 1609. It had previously been observed by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano sailing for King Francis I of France in 1524, as he became the first European known to have entered the Upper Bay, but he considered the river to be an estuary. The Dutch called the river the "North River" – with the Delaware River called the "South River" – and it formed the spine of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Settlement of the colony clustered around the Hudson, and its strategic importance as the gateway to the American interior led to years of competition between the English and the Dutch over control of the river and colony. During the eighteenth century, the river valley and its inhabitants were the subject and inspiration of Washington Irving, the first internationally acclaimed American author. In the nineteenth century, the area inspired the Hudson River School of landscape painting, an American pastoral style, as well as the concepts of environmental conservation and wilderness.
City
Albany, New York
Alpine, New Jersey
Beacon, New York
Croton-on-Hudson, New York
Dobbs Ferry, New York
Edgewater, New Jersey
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Glens Falls, New York
Guttenberg, New Jersey
Hoboken, New Jersey
Hudson, New York
Jersey City, New Jersey
Kingston, New York
Mechanicville, New York
New York City
Newburgh (city), New York
North Bergen, New Jersey
Nyack, New York
Peekskill, New York
Poughkeepsie, New York
Queensbury, New York
South Nyack, New York
Tarrytown, New York
Tenafly, New Jersey
Troy, New York
Weehawken, New Jersey
West New York, New Jersey
Yonkers, New York
Length (km)
506943.360000
Maximum discharge (m³/s)
6088.122017
Minimum discharge (m³/s)
24.975459
Mouth elevation (µ)
0.000000
Source
Henderson Lake (New York)
Newcomb, New York
Source elevation (µ)
552.907200
Source mountain
Adirondack Mountains
Source place
Adirondack Mountains
State
New Jersey
New York
Watershed (km2)
36259833544.704002
Comment
0