Albany - Colonie including Latham

Albany was settled by the Dutch in 1686 as Fort Orange, a beaver trading post in Dutch New Netherlands. This was based on Henry Hudson's voyages up his namesake river for the Dutch. Albany is at the northern end of the navigable waters of the Hudson Estuary. From the Atlantic to the US Army Corps of Engineers Dam, or 101th Street Dam, in Troy, the Hudson is tidal, there is only 7' of vertical drop for over 150 miles. Hudson's Halfmoon and British navy ships could sail the Hudson if they knew the tides, currents and winds. Especially during dry summers low flow days, backtides can be quite extensive during moontides on the Atlantic. During the Revolution, the British were driven out of Albany when us colonials erected an iron chain across the river at West Point, forcing the maritime based British Army to retreat to its base in New York Harbor. These were the key forts that our arch traitor Benedict Arnold tried to betray to the desperate British. If the British had carried the forts and broke the chain, they would have split us colonials in two. This left upstate NY as a land bridge between New England and the rest of the colonies.

Though Albany has tons of Dutch and English colonial history, as well as pre colonial Indian history too, it really blossomed when the Erie Canal, Clinton's Ditch, was built in the 1820's, exploiting the geographic fact that Albany and the Mohawk Valley provides the only way west without climbing mountains. Governer DeWitt Clinton was the man behind the Erie Canal and there are Clinton Streets all over New York State because of that. Then the New York Central's Hudson, Mohawk, Western and Erie Divisions exploited this to become the premier railroad of the 19th and the first half of the 20th Century, providing "water level" service to Chicago from New York City in less than 20 hours on the Empire State Limited and other fast trains. In its time, Albany it was a big rail town, where they had car shops and built engines in West Albany Yards. Then the state built first NY 5, Central Avenue, then the I-90 stretch of the NYS Thruway to utilize this precious Mohawk Pass between the Adirondacks and Appalachian Mountains as the best and flattest route to the west.

Southern rural Albany County, the hilltowns of Berne, Knox, Westerlo, Coeymans, Rensselaerville and Altamont, have plenty of woods and state land on the hilltops. They stand in contrast to the City of Albany and the usual suburban sprawl, like in Colonie and Guilderland. Some parts are just as remote as the Adirondacks. It is served by Albany County's excellent network of county routes and the usual good state highways like NY 32, 85, 443..... Partridge Run game area and Cole Hill State Forest, with XC ski trails, in Berne are totally excellent places. Hunting here is good: the hills are forested and state land usually with working farms in the valleys. This part butts against rural Greene and Schoharie Counties.