About

Downstate histories, preserved and on view.

Every place keeps a past, and most of it sits one generation away from loss: in a neighbor’s memory, a box in a basement, photos left in an attic for years.

The Hudson Valley Archive collects what the region has half forgotten, and much that was passed over. A man dressed head to toe in a hand-crafted leather suit, walking a 365-mile loop through these towns, his name forgotten. The Hudson running both ways, its sturgeon living up to sixty years and keeping the count in their bodies.

A slow chain of lights crossing the night sky in the mid-1980s, caught on film and developed at one-hour photo counters, the prints showing what witnesses called UFOs. A young man known as the Poughkeepsie Seer, dictating in a trance a description of the world after this one. He called it the Summerland.

Some of these routes are on a map. Most were never drawn.

The history belongs to the place. We are its archivists, and anyone may add to the record. Each Article is printed in a small, numbered edition and catalogued with a field note giving its subject, method and provenance. When a reader writes in, or a story surfaces on microfilm at the library, the record grows, and with it the Article you hold.

We cite what can be cited, and label legend as legend.

Membership is open. Dispatches go out when there is something new to report, and not before. Some files go quiet for a long time. They are not closed.

Tip Line: dispatch@hudsonvalleyarchive.co
Corrections, sightings and testimony we should have on file. Credited or anonymous, at your discretion. Every submission is reviewed before anything is filed.