Hudson River Watershed

People have lived along the Hudson River since the end of the last Ice Age. Several groups including the Mohicans, the Lenape, and the Munsee practiced agriculture, harvested oysters, and fished along the length of the Hudson River valley. The Lenape people called the Hudson Mahicannituck, which means the river that is never still. However, since the arrival of European colonization, the river has been dramatically changed in other ways. Humans have physically altered the river channel, regulated the river’s flow, polluted its water, harvested its inhabitants, and introduced nonnative species of plants and animals. The channel alteration that began in the early nineteenth century to make the river more suitable for navigation, afford access to rail lines along both shores, make the shoreline more hospitable to human use, and eliminate ‘waste’ wetlands vastly transformed the tidal river by 1900. Particularly in the upper freshwater tidal Hudson, the channel was deepened and narrowed... everywhere shorelines were straightened and hardened with riprap, bulkheads, and concrete.