Albany

Albany exists because beavers were valuable and the Hudson River was navigable—a Dutch trading post called Beverwyck ('place of beavers') that became America's oldest continuously chartered city. Four centuries later, Albany is engineering a new ecosystem: semiconductors instead of pelts.

Fort Orange rose in 1624 where the Mohawk River meets the Hudson, creating the natural chokepoint for North America's fur trade. The English took over in 1664, named it for the Duke of Albany, and in 1686 issued the Dongan Charter—still in force. When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, Albany became its eastern terminus, a 32-acre basin connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. When New York chose its capital in 1797, it chose Albany.

But capital status proved both blessing and curse. Government employment provided stability; it also discouraged private-sector risk. Albany slept through the twentieth century while downstate industries boomed and bust.

The awakening came in 1993 when physicist Alain Kaloyeros convinced New York to invest in semiconductor research. The state has since poured $2 billion into building the Albany NanoTech Complex—the largest semiconductor R&D facility in North America, now valued at $20 billion in cumulative investment. GlobalFoundries, the only major chip foundry in the United States, operates just north in Malta; in 2025, it announced an $11.6 billion expansion with $1.5 billion in CHIPS Act funding.

The irony is elegant: a city founded on beaver engineering now practices ecosystem engineering of its own, constructing the infrastructure for America's semiconductor independence. Albany's 10,000+ chip-sector workers are building the future where beavers once built dams.