Author: Cynthia Owen Philip

In Rhinecliff, Cynthia Owen Philip paints a vivid portrait, filled with fascinating detail and extraordinary characters, of a proud, independent community with a sense of place like no other. Overshadowed by its upstreet rival — the politically more powerful village of Rhinebeck — and closely surrounded by the great estates of the Astors, Livingstons, and Beekmans, feisty Rhinecliff has carved out its own unique identity from its scenic rocky perch on the eastern bank of the Hudson River in Dutchess County. In this copiously illustrated book, author Philip untangles the tale of the community’s long history from early Native Americans and the 1686 land deal that paved the way for settlement, to colonial Kingston burning on the horizon and British warships anchored off its docks, through the heydays of steam navigation on the Hudson and the coming of the railroads, the slow collapse of the great estates and the 20th-century decline of riverfront communities all along the Hudson, right up to the 21st-century rebirth and the land-use battles that rage as fiercely today as any other conflict in the long history of the Hudson Valley.

Paperback, 216 pages

Publisher: Black Dome Press