Page 66 - Dutchess Tourism 2022

Did You Know?
Back in 2013, New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater featured a reading of a musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda at the annual summertime Vassar College showcase. Then called “The Hamilton Mixtape,” it soon turned into the Broadway smash and Tony Award-winning “Hamilton.”
In the summer of 1788, delegates from across New York met in the Dutchess County Courthouse in Poughkeepsie to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Dutchess County native and Anti- Federalist Melancton Smith engineered a comprise with the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, that ratified the Constitution and laid the groundwork
for the Bill of Rights. Artist Seth Nadel depicted this scene in a mural in the Poughkeepsie Post Office lobby.
The Hudson River is really an
estuary, found where rivers meet oceans. The tide makes the arm of
the sea run north and south, which
led the native Lenape people to call
it the “river that flows both ways,”
or Muhheakantuck. (The Two Way Brewing Company in Beacon also gets its name from this phenomenon.)
W. E. B. Du Bois, a leading African American writer
and activist, met with white and Black intellectuals at Troutbeck in Amenia, leading to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
During the 1760s, New York’s colonial government
implemented Benjamin Franklin’s plan to install
mile markers along
the Albany-New York City Post Road, today’s Route 9. Franklin was the
Postmaster General of the British colonies at the time,
and the markers can still be seen today in stone niches
along the highway.
Folk music legend
Pete Seeger and his wife Toshi moved
to Beacon in 1949 and lived there for more than 60 years. The environmental activists fell in love with the beauty of the region and worked tirelessly to clean up the Hudson River. Visitors to their home in Fishkill can book
a ride aboard the
Clearwater, a replica
of the cargo sloops that traveled the Hudson River in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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DUTCHESS COUNTY DESTINATION GUIDE 2022
© ADOBE STOCK
© ADOBE STOCK