The Albany Pine Bush, referred to locally as the Pine Bush, is one of the largest of the 20 inland pine barrens in the world. It is centrally located in New York's Capital District within Albany and Schenectady counties, between the cities of Albany and Schenectady. The Albany Pine Bush was formed thousands of years ago, following the drainage of Glacial Lake Albany.
The Albany Pine Bush is the sole remaining undeveloped portion of a pine barrens that once covered over , and is "one of the best remaining examples of an inland pine barrens ecosystem in the world." By 2008 it included all parcels of the Albany Pine Bush Preserve (a state nature preserve spanning ), the properties that connect these protected parcels, and some of the surrounding areas that abut the preserve. The Woodlawn Preserve and surrounding areas in Schenectady County are the western sections of the Pine Bush, separated geographically by other properties from the Albany Pine Bush Preserve in Albany County.
Historically regarded by European settlers as desolate and dangerous to cross, the Pine Bush has come to be seen as a historical, cultural, and environmental asset to the Capital District and Hudson Valley regions of New York. It is home to the Karner blue butterfly, an endangered species first identified by author Vladimir Nabokov in 1944 using a type specimen from the Pine Bush. In 2014, Albany Pine Bush was designated as a National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service.
History
European colonization
Around 10,000 years ago Native Americans moved into the Pine Bush area. When Europeans arrived in the early 17th century, two groups lived in the immediate area: the Mohawk nation of the Haudenosaunee to the west along the Mohawk River, and the Mohican to the east, along the Hudson River. The Dutch traded with both native groups from their outpost at Fort Orange (present-day Albany), which was established in 1624. For the natives the Pine Bush was an important source of firewood and animal pelts to trade with the Dutch. By 1640 the natives were having trouble finding enough animals in the Pine Bush to supply the growing European demand. The Mohawk referred to the settlement at Fort Orange as skahnéhtati, meaning "beyond the pine plains," referring to the large area of the Pine Bush between the Hudson and Mohawk rivers.
The Dutch granted a patent in 1661 under the name of Schenectady to a settlement on a bend in the Mohawk River to the west of the Pine Bush and about 20 miles from Fort Orange. To the settlers at Fort Orange, the settlement on the Mohawk River started by Arent van Curler was "beyond the pine plains", and therefore the name Schenectady (in various spellings) became associated with the village at that site. In 1664, the Dutch surrendered their entire colony of New Netherland, including Albany and Schenectady, to the English.
What became known as the King's Highway were a series of footpaths which the Mohawk had long used to get from west in the valley through the Pine Bush to trade with other tribes at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. This area was later the site of the Dutch Fort Orange. After the founding of Schenectady, the name was used for what became a major route between the two settlements but, until the mid-18th century, it was not improved beyond a footpath. During the war from 1699 to 1707, Albany residents collected firewood from the Pine Bush for the large army that was camped at Fort Frederick.
In 1710, Germans immigrated from Palatine to the Albany area. To pay off the cost of their passage some were sent to work camps in the Pine Bush to harvest pines for pitch and rosin for the construction of English naval vessels. Some of these immigrants named the Helderberg Escarpment and settled Schoharie County. Others, largely from work camps in Dutchess County along the Hudson River, settled further west in the valley in 1723, past Little Falls on the Burnetsfield Patent.