Albany and the Hudson River Valley region of New York State will celebrate a significant anniversary in 2009. That year will mark the 400^th anniversary of our European founding by Dutch explorer Henry Hudson. It will be a wonderful opportunity to explore the Dutch heritage of the Hudson Valley and to celebrate with special events on the Hudson River, along the shores of the river and at historic sites throughout the region. Join us as we revisit our past and share a future of continued discovery.

European Discovery

The Dutch arrived at the broad tidal river we know as the Hudson in 1609 and brought European culture to its shores.

Holland’s domination of the seas fueled a hunger for new markets and raw materials and for shorter, safer routes to reach them. To find a supposedly shorter route to the Orient, the powerful Dutch East India Company hired an ambitious English explorer, Henry Hudson, who sailed the Atlantic three times. He found no passage, but on his third voyage he found what we now call the Hudson River and, near the head of navigation, the place we know as Albany.

Hudson returned to Europe without the silk, spices and stoneware he had expected to find.  Instead he carried beaver furs, and word of a land with vast resources.

“I pray with all my heart…that my name be carved upon the tablets of the sea”  Henry Hudson

Click here to visit The New Netherland Project

Native American History

For centuries before the arrival of the Europeans, Algonkian-speaking Native Americans lived along the Hudson River. In the Upper Hudson Valley, it was the Mahican people who greeted Henry Hudson as he anchored his ship the Half Moon in this fertile river valley in 1609.

The Iroquoian-speaking Mohawks lived west of the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers and were the eastern most tribe of the Five Nations, comprised of the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga and Seneca. The Mahican and Mohawk people both played an important role in the development of the Fur Trade. But by 1624, competition grew and the Mohawks eventually gained control of the land around what would become Albany.

Click here to visit the Hudson River Valley Institute
Native American Institute of the Hudson River Valley 

For almost 400 years, Albany has reinvented itself as a trading center, hub of government, home to world-class art and architecture… and now the cutting edge of technology and research. Always at the crossroads of the northeast, there is a new vibrancy in Albany that reflects both its link to history and its promising future.