The Hudson River is a mile km river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York , United States. The river serves as a physical boundary between the states of New Jersey and New York at its southern end. Farther north, it marks local boundaries between several New York counties. The lower half of the river is a tidal estuary , deeper than the body of water into which it flows, occupying the Hudson Fjord , an inlet that formed during the most recent period of North American glaciation , estimated at 26, to 13, years ago.
Even as far north as the city of Troy , the flow of the river changes direction with the tides. It had previously been observed by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailing for King Francis I of France in , as he became the first European known to have entered the Upper New York Bay , but he considered the river to be an estuary. Settlements 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 18th 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 environmentalism and wilderness.
The Hudson River was also the eastern outlet for the Erie Canal , which, when completed in , became an important transportation artery for the early 19th century United States. Pollution in the Hudson River increased in the 20th century, more acutely by mid-century, particularly with industrial contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls , also known by their acronym PCBs.
Pollution control regulations, enforcement actions and restoration projects initiated in the latter 20th century have begun to improve water quality, and restoration work has continued in the 21st century. The meaning of the Mohican name comes from the river's long tidal range. The Delaware Tribe of Indians Bartlesville, Oklahoma considers the closely related Mohicans to be a part of the Lenape people, [ 12 ] and so the Lenape also claim the Hudson as part of their ancestral territory, also calling it Muhheakantuck.
