Fish & Ships Bridge Landing

Gifts of the River

Long before canoes traveled the Hudson River, and long before bridges carried vehicles across it, there was only one kind of traffic, and it was made up of fish — lots of them. Before the Europeans arrived, Native Americans (members of the Lenape tribe) built summertime camps along the river and feasted on the river’s bounty. In fact, the name Nyack derives from an Algonquian Native American word that means “Fishing Place” or perhaps “Point of Land.”

Oyster Repopulation

More than 200 species of fish and shellfish still call this tidal estuary home. Many of these species were once plentiful before decades of pollution and overharvesting led to declines in their populations. The first Europeans to visit this area, including Henry Hudson, made note of their abundance and well into the 19th century, piles of discarded shells were heaped along the river. 

Placed near the bridge in 2018, an oyster reef system covers more than five acres in the river, and is part of New York State’s commitment to re-establish the local wild oyster population. In fact, more than 1,000 oyster reef balls and gabions have been installed in the river in recent years as part of on-going efforts to understand oyster habitat and their reproductive cycles. 

In the 1980s, a construction project just south of here in Dobbs Ferry came to a halt so that archaeologists could excavate a pit filled with shells dating back to 6950 BCE. So closely was New York City associated with the bivalve that some say that before it was “The Big Apple,” the city was sometimes called “The Big Oyster.” 

More than 1,000 oyster reef balls and gabions have been installed in the river 

The Big Four

Waters both fresh and salty can be found in the Hudson River. Sturgeon, shad and striped bass are anadromous fish; born in freshwater, moving to saltwater to grow, and returning to freshwater to reproduce.

Atlantic Sturgeon

The largest fish in the Hudson was and still is the Atlantic sturgeon. A pre-historic-looking creature with skin resembling armor, the Atlantic sturgeon is an anadromous fish, one that lives in the salty ocean but spawns in the fresh water of the river.

Besides its poetic stature, the sturgeon was also an extremely popular restaurant offering known as “Albany Beef.” When cured in salt, unfertilized sturgeon eggs, or roe, become a delicacy called caviar, once served free to bar patrons when they ordered a nickel beer.

It appears in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s immortal 1855 poem, “The Song of Hiawatha” as “Mishe-Nahma…the sturgeon, King of Fishes…” In the poem, Hiawatha and the leviathan engage in an epic battle — spoiler alert: Hiawatha wins in the end — during which the monstrous fish swallows the brave Native American, his squirrel companion and his birch canoe. Fishermen who have battled the sturgeon in these waters might say that the poet exaggerated – but not by much. A mature Atlantic sturgeon can grow to 14 feet and tip the scales at 800 pounds over the course of its 60-year lifetime.

Thanks to conservation efforts, recent surveys of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation show abundances of young Atlantic sturgeon increasing again. A moratorium on commercial and recreational fishing protects both shad and sturgeon. The shortnose sturgeon received Endangered Species Act protection in 1967. Strict oversight and protections (limiting fishing and restrictions on dredging for commercial vessel activity) have allowed the population to recover. 

American Shad

It's no coincidence that a shrub called the shadbush flowers the same time each spring as the American shad, another iconic Hudson River fish and the largest members of the herring family, enters the river for its annual spawning run. So regular a part of nature's cycle has been the appearance of the shad that fisherman called different stages of the run by the names of other plants flowering on shore: forsythia early in the season, then dogwood and later lilac.

The American shad is the largest member of the herring family. In its heyday, the shad ran upstream in the Hudson to spawn in enormous numbers: 30 million each spring, by some estimates. Habitat degradation caused the population to decline steeply. A New York State ban on commercial and recreational fishing of shad has been in place since 2010, leading to an increase in its population.

Striped Bass

The sturgeon, the shad and another iconic Hudson River fish, the striped bass, all of which spend most of their adult lives in the Atlantic Ocean, supported a thriving commercial fishing industry on the river, one that in many cases passed down through families for generations. Beyond that, during periods of economic hardship, the Hudson’s bounty provided both food and work.
Striped bass adults spend most of their time in coastal waters and return to the fresh water of the Hudson River each spring to spawn before returning back to the Atlantic Ocean. They can live as long as 30 years and grow to lengths of up to five feet. Large fish can weigh more than 70 pounds.

Striped bass adults spend most of their time in coastal waters and return to the fresh water of the Hudson River each spring to spawn before returning back to the Atlantic Ocean. They can live as long as 30 years and grow to lengths of up to 5 feet. Large fish can weigh more than 70 pounds.

The Early Days

The first recorded European to settle in this area came in 1675 to trade for beaver furs and to farm a tract of land purchased from the Tappan Tribe — for whom the bay called the “Tappan Zee” is named. Others followed, and Nyack remained a small farming community into the early 1800s. Farmers supplemented their crops by quarrying rich deposits of red sandstone on the banks of the river. Demand for the rock, used for brick-making, grew quickly as New York City began to grow and build the iconic neighborhood row houses called “brownstones.” At the time, since roads were primitive, the fastest way to move material was on the water. As the need for river transport grew, Nyack became by far the largest shipbuilding port on the Hudson, turning out a single-masted sailboat based on a Dutch design called a sloop.

The Nyacks were a native band from Coney Island, welcomed here by the Tappan, whose territory extended from Staten Island to Hook Mountain. Both were part of the Lenape people who inhabited the east coast from Delaware to the Lower Hudson Valley. Related Lenape people populated the middle Atlantic coast south of the area controlled by the Iroquois Confederation.

A Bustling River Town

In the early 1800s, the brothers Tunis and Peter Smith bought the land that would become downtown Nyack.  They launched stores and a hotel, laid out streets, and divided the land into lots. A steamboat business was started at the foot of Main Street, John Van Houten was building boats in Upper Nyack, and Henry Gesner opened a yard at the foot of Clinton Avenue in today’s South Nyack.

Steamboat travel

By 1860, expansion of quarrying and shipbuilding, steamboat transportation and the opening of the Nyack Turnpike from Suffern had ballooned Nyack's population to more than 2,000. In addition to a bustling downtown, small neighborhoods developed around boatyards in Upper Nyack and South Nyack. Although the appearance of sleek, fast-moving steamboats in the early 1800s relegated the once-majestic but slow-moving sloop to the mundane work of carrying heavy cargo, shipbuilding continued at a brisk pace. Steamboat travel came to the Hudson River in 1807, when Robert Fulton launched the 140-foot long Clermont to carry passengers from New York to Albany in 32 hours and steamboats quickly came to dominate river travel. An association of 11 entrepreneurs in Nyack led by John Green launched their own service in 1829 with a vessel that carried passengers from Nyack to New York for the same price as a sloop. Within another 30 years, there were more than 200 steamboats on the Hudson, the fastest of which made the New York to Albany run in a blistering seven hours.

Captains of Industry

Nyack yards turned out flat-bottomed scows, steamboats, sloops, schooners, ferries, and more. Local inventors devised ways to increase the speed and safety of steamboats and reduce costs. Captains of industry came to Nyack for luxurious yachts, including J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John Jacob Astor. During both World Wars, Nyack shipbuilders produced submarine chasers for the U.S. Navy. One of them, the USS SC-742, built in 1942 at Petersen’s boatyard, picked up survivors from the American tanker Virginia Sinclair off the coast of Cuba after it was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. Now known as North River Shipyard, Petersen’s yard dates back to the 18th century.

The Clearwater's Mission

A stately replica of a 19th century sloop called the Clearwater helps tell the story of the Hudson River in more recent times. The Clearwater began its educational mission in 1968, at a time when the river was suffering from years of degradation. Its once fabled oysters had disappeared, victims of industrial runoff and overconsumption. Similarly, pollution and habitat destruction had caused the populations of the Atlantic sturgeon and shad to crash.

To further its conservation mission, the environmental organization with the same name partners with communities and schools to educate the public about importance of preserving the Hudson River, its tributaries and watershed, and other similar river systems. Alongside Clearwater, organizations such as Riverkeeper, Scenic Hudson, the Billion Oyster Project and the National Resources Defenses Council have worked to preserve and protect this river.

The inspiration for Clearwater project came from legendary folksinger and activist Pete Seeger (1919 – 2014), who hoped the replica would bring people to the river where they could experience its beauty and be moved to preserve it.

Environmental Stewardship

To protect fish and the estuarine environment during the construction of the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, the New York State Thruway Authority adopted stringent measures to prevent erosion and churning of silt, monitor water quality, and minimize underwater noise caused by construction. The steps it took included placing gravel on the riverbed in dredged areas; frequent water sampling to ensure quality was maintained; relocation and restoration of vulnerable oyster beds; and limiting the noisy pile driving to allow fish movement. All of these efforts have helped to protect Hudson River aquatic life during construction.

Use of advanced air bubble “curtains” to dampen sound waves during pile driving helped to ease the impacts of underwater noise on aquatic life in the river.

Did you Know?

Nyack’s harbor has seen its fair share of nautical history. It even has a ghost ship lying in the water not far from here. It’s a barge made of, believe it or not, concrete, and designed to carry cargo on the Erie Canal during World War I. The idea was that these vessels, 150 feet long by 21 feet wide, could be built quickly and inexpensively. The problem was that they were as fragile as eggshells, and sank quickly whenever they hit anything. A concrete barge used in the construction of the Tappan Zee Bridge in the 1950s is visible today just off shore from Memorial Park in Nyack.