Pete Seeger's Hudson Valley Home — Beacon, New York

Pete Seeger — the most important figure in twentieth-century American folk music — lived for decades in Beacon, New York, on the Hudson River, in a log house he built himself on Dutchess Mountain. The Hudson Valley was not incidental to his life and work: he was deeply committed to the environmental restoration of the Hudson River, founding the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater organisation in 1966 and sailing the replica sloop Clearwater up and down the river for decades, using it as a floating classroom and a platform for environmental advocacy. The river's recovery from industrial pollution is substantially his achievement.

Seeger's musical career encompassed the labour movement of the 1930s and 1940s (with the Almanac Singers), the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s (with the Weavers and as a solo artist), and a sustained influence on subsequent generations that is almost impossible to overstate. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and virtually every folk and protest singer of the 1960s learned from him or directly from his song collections and banjo instruction manuals. Songs he popularised — "If I Had a Hammer," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "Turn! Turn! Turn!" — became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements. "We Shall Overcome" was passed to him by Zilphia Horton and passed by him to the world.

Beacon has embraced Seeger's legacy thoroughly: the Clearwater Festival, which he founded in 1966, continues annually on the Hudson. A statue of Seeger stands in the city. He performed publicly almost until his death on January 27, 2014, at the age of 94. The log house on the mountain — built with his own hands as a young man — remains in the family.