Columbia County, New York

Columbia County is a county in New York, United States, about 30 miles south of Albany on the
east bank of the Hudson River. It had a population of 61,570 at the 2020 census, an estimated
60,168 by 2025, and covers 648 square miles (1,680 km2) centred near 42°15′N 73°38′W.

Hudson is the county seat and its only city; its postal code is 12534. The county holds 1 city,
4 incorporated villages and 18 towns, and it runs on Eastern Time. Its FIPS code is 36021.

Towns & Villages in Columbia County

Columbia County has 18 towns — New York’s version of a civil township — plus one
city and four villages incorporated inside those towns. Below are the city, the villages, and 12
named hamlets with their own ZIP code or Census recognition; dozens of smaller crossroads and
mobile-home parks are not separately incorporated and carry no population or ZIP of their own.
CDP stands for census designated place; Unincorp. covers hamlets with no formal boundary.

Two places on this list straddle a town line rather than a county line. Stottville sits mostly
in the town of Stockport, south of Stockport Creek, with its northern edge reaching into the town
of Greenport. Elizaville splits between the towns of Livingston and Gallatin, with no single town
claiming it outright. The village of Chatham is itself split between the towns of Chatham and
Ghent, and Philmont straddles Claverack and Ghent the same way.

Towns

Columbia County’s 18 towns are its true units of local government — each elects its own
town board and holds its own property tax roll, the same function a township performs elsewhere.
Sorted by 2020 population, largest first:

ZIP Codes

• 12534 — Hudson
• 12184 — Valatie
• 12037 — Chatham
• 12106 — Kinderhook
• 12565 — Philmont
• 12172 — Stottville
• 12136 — Old Chatham
• 12060 — East Chatham
• 12132 — North Chatham
• 12165 — Spencertown
• 12130 — Niverville
• 12503 — Ancramdale
• 12502 — Ancram
• 12174 — Stuyvesant Falls
• 12173 — Stuyvesant
• 12517 — Copake Falls
• 12516 — Copake
• 12521 — Craryville
• 12195 — West Lebanon
• 12125 — New Lebanon
• 12050 — Columbiaville
• 12523 — Elizaville
• 12541 — Livingston
• 12513 — Claverack
• 12526 — Germantown
• 12075 — Ghent
• 12529 — Hillsdale
• 12029 — Canaan
• 12017 — Austerlitz

The county carries 32 ZIP codes in total; the ones above cover every incorporated place and
every hamlet with its own post office. Smaller crossroads such as Boston Corner and Malden Bridge
have no ZIP of their own and are served under a neighbouring hamlet’s code.

Geography

Columbia County sits in the upper Hudson Valley, on the Hudson River’s east bank across from
the Catskills. Of its 648 square miles, 635 are land and 14 are water — about 2.1 percent,
mostly the Hudson River itself along the county’s western edge, plus Kinderhook Creek, Claverack
Creek, the Roeliff Jansen Kill and Queechy Lake in Canaan. The eastern edge of the county climbs
into the foothills of the Berkshires, where Alander Mountain and the Taconic Range form the New
York–Massachusetts line.

Rensselaer County lies to the north, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, to the east, Dutchess
County to the south, and Greene County across the Hudson River to the west; Albany County touches
the county’s northwest corner. Rensselaer
County, Dutchess County and
Greene County all border
Columbia directly; Albany County does not currently have a page on this site.

Demographics

Columbia County had a population of 61,570 at the 2020 census, and the latest estimate puts the
county near 60,168 residents by 2025, a decline typical of rural upstate New York. Kinderhook and
Claverack are the two largest towns, together holding roughly a fifth of the county’s population.
Median household income runs about $81,528, close to New York’s 2023 ACS statewide figure of
$82,095. Population density works out to roughly 97 people per square mile of land, low for the
Hudson Valley and consistent with a county of small towns and farmland rather than a metro core.

Economy & Local Life

Health care and social assistance is the county’s largest employment sector, with about 4,163
workers, followed by educational services at 3,504 and retail trade at 2,999. Hudson’s Warren
Street corridor, lined with roughly seventy antique shops, galleries and restaurants, anchors a
tourism trade built on the city’s 1960s-70s revival. Camphill Village, a therapeutic farming
community for adults with developmental disabilities, is a major employer and landowner in the
town of Copake. Dairy farming and hay production remain active across the county’s western and
southern towns, a continuation of the grain, wool and dairy economy the county built through the
19th century. The Columbia County Fair, first held in Hudson in 1841 and moved permanently to
Chatham in 1856, runs each August and is one of the older continuously operating county fairs in
the United States.

History

New York’s legislature formed Columbia County on 4 April 1786, carving it out of Albany County.
The name comes from the Latin feminine form of Christopher Columbus’s name, a popular candidate
for naming the young United States itself at the time. Dutch settlers had already been in the
area since the 1640s, and German Palatine refugees settled along the Hudson River shore beginning
in 1710, founding what became the town of Germantown.

Hudson, chartered as a city in 1785 by Quaker whaling merchants from New England, was briefly
the 24th-largest city in the United States by 1790 and the state’s fourth-largest by 1820. Martin
Van Buren, the eighth U.S. president, was born in the town of Kinderhook in 1782 and retired to
his estate, Lindenwald, just south of Kinderhook village, where he died in 1862; the site is now
a National Historic Site.

Getting There

No interstate highway crosses Columbia County. The Taconic State Parkway is the county’s main
limited-access route, running north-south through its eastern towns; US Route 9 and US Route 20
carry most through traffic along the Hudson River and in the north, and NY Routes 22, 23 and 82
connect the eastern hill towns.

• Albany — about 30 miles north
• Poughkeepsie — about 30 miles south
• Pittsfield, Massachusetts — about 25 miles east
• Great Barrington, Massachusetts — about 15 miles east

Albany International Airport, roughly 35 miles north of Hudson, is the nearest major commercial
airport. Amtrak’s Empire Service trains stop at the Hudson station on North Front Street,
connecting the city to New York City and Albany.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Columbia County located?
It sits in New York’s upper Hudson Valley, on the river’s east bank about 30 miles south of
Albany, bordered by Rensselaer, Berkshire (Massachusetts), Dutchess, Greene and Albany counties.

What is the population of Columbia County?
61,570 at the 2020 census, with an estimate near 60,168 by 2025.

How big is Columbia County?
648 square miles (1,680 km2), of which 635 square miles are land.

What is the county seat of Columbia County?
Hudson, chartered as a city in 1785, is the county seat and the county’s only city.

How many towns and villages are in Columbia County?
18 towns, plus four incorporated villages inside them — Chatham, Kinderhook, Philmont and
Valatie.

What ZIP codes does Columbia County use?
32 in total, led by 12534 for Hudson, 12106 for Kinderhook, 12184 for Valatie and 12037 for
Chatham.

What is Columbia County known for?
Hudson’s antique-shop-lined Warren Street, Frederic Edwin Church’s Olana estate above the river,
and the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook.

More counties in this state: Towns and villages in New York.