<P> In 1965, governor Nelson Rockefeller proposed the Hudson River Expressway, a limited - access highway from the Bronx to Beacon . An 8 - mile section was built from Ossining to Peekskill, now part of U.S. Route 9; the rest of the highway was never built due to local opposition . </P> <P> In the early 19th century, popularized by the stories of Washington Irving, the Hudson Valley gained a reputation as a somewhat gothic region inhabited by the remnants of the early days of the Dutch colonization of New York (see, e.g., The Legend of Sleepy Hollow). The area is associated with the Hudson River School, a group of American Romantic painters who worked from about 1830 to 1870 . </P> <P> Hudson River School paintings reflect three themes of America in the 19th century: discovery, exploration, and settlement . The paintings also depict the American landscape as a pastoral setting, where human beings and nature coexist peacefully . Hudson River School landscapes are characterized by their realistic, detailed, and sometimes idealized portrayal of nature, often juxtaposing peaceful agriculture and the remaining wilderness, which was fast disappearing from the Hudson Valley just as it was coming to be appreciated for its qualities of ruggedness and sublimity . In general, Hudson River School artists believed that nature in the form of the American landscape was an ineffable manifestation of God, though the artists varied in the depth of their religious conviction . They took as their inspiration such European masters as Claude Lorrain, John Constable and J.M.W. Turner . Their reverence for America's natural beauty was shared with contemporary American writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson . The Düsseldorf school of painting had a direct influence on the Hudson River School . </P> <P> The school characterizes the artistic body, its New York location, its landscape subject matter, and often its subject, the Hudson River . While the elements of the paintings were rendered realistically, many of the scenes were composed as a synthesis of multiple scenes or natural images observed by the artists . In gathering the visual data for their paintings, the artists would travel to extraordinary and extreme environments, which generally had conditions that would not permit extended painting at the site . During these expeditions, the artists recorded sketches and memories, returning to their studios to paint the finished works later . </P>

Why did the connecticut river valley not play an important role like new york’s hudson river valley