The Historic Hudson River

The Hudson River at Corinth was shaped about 12,000 years ago by the last glacier to cover New York State, which left a moraine forming the elevated areas of Corinth village and forced the river east along the moraine’s northern edge to its present course, where its flow gradually exposed the ledges of Curtis and Palmer Falls and the Palisades beneath Pagenstecher Park. The upper Hudson attracted adventurers and tourists early in the 19th century, and artists including Jacques Milbert, William Guy Wall, and later John William Hill depicted Jessup’s Landing and its ferry, river traffic, livestock, and surrounding landscape. Corinth village was originally called Jessup’s Landing after Edward and Ebenezer Jessup, who secured a 4,100-acre land grant in 1767 and used the site in their timber business, where rafts had to be landed and portaged around Palmer Falls; although the Jessups fled to Canada as Loyalists during the American Revolution after their homes and mills were destroyed and their lands confiscated, the name remained in use until the Village of Corinth was incorporated in 1886. That incorporation reflected growth and prosperity tied largely to the Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company, and the nearby area remained largely undeveloped until the 1920s, after which the village opened a bathing beach in 1931, the Civil War Soldier’s Monument stood there after its move in 1923 before later being relocated again, and the Corinth Free Library moved beside the beach in 1951. By the early 1800s lumbermen floated individual logs down the Hudson instead of using timber rafts, and frequent log jams at Curtis and Palmer Falls sometimes backed up the river for a mile or more; especially large jams occurred in 1872 and 1882, and in 1879 two men were swept over Palmer Falls and killed while trying to break up a jam at the Hudson River Pulp and Paper Company dam.

Corinth, New York · United States