A glance through 250 million years of Hudson Valley history

PINE PLAINS — For all the lectures the Pine Plains Free Library has held to teach its patrons about the Hudson Valley, never before have they been taken on a tour of 250 million years’ worth of history. Never, that is, until its most recent author talk featuring David Levine and his new book, “The Hudson Valley: The First 250 Million Years: A Mostly Chronological and Occasionally Personal History,” on Thursday, Dec. 3.

Held via Zoom due to the coronavirus pandemic, the author talk drew a handful of readers in attendance, and their interest in the discussion only grew with Library Assistant Alexis Tackett’s introduction of Levine’s book and research. 

In his introductory remarks, Levine shared that he’s been a writer since he took a college internship during President Jimmy Carter’s administration at a weekly newspaper in Rochester, N.Y. Since his travels to New York City, he’s worked as a writer and editor and has freelanced during the years for publications such as The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, American Heritage and others. 

Originally working as a sports journalist, Levine published six books on sports, some of which he wrote and some of which he co-wrote. Seeing as his last book was written 25 years ago, Levine said his recent book has been “a very fun experience… being between hardcovers again.”

Levine said he started writing for Hudson Valley Magazine in 2007 as a regular contributor. In 2010, the magazine began a regular history column and offered Levine the job. Calling his decision to write the column “one of the best yes’s I ever yes’d,” Levine said he’s had the pleasure of immersing himself in the history of a region he didn’t know that much about. 

From the dinosaurs that left their footprints and the glaciers that carved the lakes and hills of the Hudson Valley to the first people who settled here, Levine said through his research into 250 million years of history, he’s learned that “the Hudson Valley has an amazing story to tell — stories — plural.”

With 70 stories bound between the pages of his newest book, Levine was soon asking his audience a question for each chapter, testing their knowledge of the Hudson Valley in a kind of a “Hudson Valley Jeopardy.” 

For the chapter entitled “Jurassic Parkchester,” he talked about the 1972 discovery of the first dinosaur fossils in Nyack Beach State in Rockland County, and how its footprints belonged to a type of lizard known as the Grallator. 

Moving ahead 250 million years, he highlighted a few spots around the Hudson Valley where residents could find geological formations carved during the Ice Age, from the floor of glacial Lake Albany to the Pine Bush Preserve in Albany County. 

Levine outlined the origins of the first people who discovered the Hudson Valley and how, upon settling in the valley, they named a river that reminded them of their original homeland Mahicannituck and called themselves the Muhheconneok, or the People of the Water That Are Never Still.

Over the next hour, readers listened intently as Levine shed light on stories related to the borders of the Oblong and how it was divided between New York State and Connecticut; a dinner party Alexander Hamilton attended in Albany; Benedict Arnold’s downfall; the Hudson Valley’s whaling heritage; how women’s right activist Sojourner Truth got her start in Ulster County; and the story of “the picnic that won the war,” where President Franklin D. Roosevelt invited King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to his home in Hyde Park and served them their first hot dogs.