The “Hudson Heartland" Region

From river to river, west to east, and from Highlands to foothills, south to north, the Hudson Heartland is the ancient westward valley once host to the Hudson River where it flowed to the sea. In the last ice age, the glacial mass piled against the northmost hills of the Highlands until its weight carved a trench through, and when the ice melted, a new path of least resistance was open to the sea. 

Today the Hudson Heartland is drained by the Wallkill River, and the Neversink, and the Rondout, the Mongaup and the Esopus; humans have labeled it as Orange and parts of Sullivan and Ulster counties in New York State. Its fertile valleys and ancient ridges—Schunnemunk, Shawangunk—stretch west of the Hudson to the Delaware. Its eastern edge looks east to the heavily settled, commuter-trained far shore. Its southern border looks southeast, over the hills to the metropolis. To its north, the Catskills rise. 

Onions and apples grow there. It has been at times a dairyland and a breeding ground for the fastest horses. Cities grow there, around rivers and railroads, and industry with them. A canal once joined the rivers, bringing coal east from the folded hills of Pennsylvania. Railroads leave, industry departs, new enterprises take root. Its fortunes rise and fall.

The name was coined by a reader of the Times Herald Record in 2004 in a reader survey to give the region its own identity.