CALL ME A NEWCOMER, outsider, even a “cityot” (hint to Manhattan sophisticates, think “city idiot”). But I’ve spent most of my life in the Hudson Valley, the last decade of it here in Columbia County, and even in that brief period I have seen the landscape change. It hits me as I commute the three miles from metropolitan Chatham to downtown Ghent.
When I arrived here, long after the Harlem Valley Railroad disappeared, the settlements of Chatham and Ghent seemed like distinct communities with physical boundaries clear to an untrained observer. The Village of Chatham and its associated businesses stopped abruptly after the Agway store south of the village line, and the hamlet of Ghent coalesced in earnest just past the bridge where over the Kline Kill before it swings north toward Valatie. There were and are modest homes along the way that reflect succeeding vintages, but there were stretches of farms too and woods.