The economy of Washington County NY reads like sediment, laid down one industry at a time. Here, flax gave way to dairy cows. Water-powered mills gave way to canal freight, then rail lines, then manufacturing facilities of all kinds. Each layer left something behind before the next one settled on top of it.
That layered structure is what matters most today. No single industry has ever carried the county’s full economic weight, which is exactly why the community has held steady each time an industry recedes. From canal-side sawmills to the family-run furniture plant still building in Granville, the same pattern still holds true two centuries later.
The Economy of Washington County NY Grew From the Ground Up
Like many colonial settlements, Washington County’s earliest economy ran on what the ground provided. Beginning in the 1700s, agricultural products, timber, lime, and slate were the county’s primary exports. Then came the construction of saw and grist mills, kilns, and foundries along the trading routes that moved them.
A century later, everything sped up. The Champlain Canal, completed in 1823, changed the scale of what was possible for the towns along its path. Locally, Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, then called Sandy Hill, quickly grew into manufacturing centers producing lumber, paper, and textiles.
That momentum carried into the rail era, too. From the late 1800s until World War II, special excursion trains carried thousands of visitors to the Cambridge Fair each year. That tradition is still alive today, too, living on in Greenwich as the Washington County Fair.
Canals, Mills, and a Shift From Flax to Dairy
For decades, manufacturing here ran on wool and flax, moved to market along the same Champlain Canal system that was still being extended and improved for a century after it opened. Then, production of both fiber products faded through the second half of the 1800s, as cheaper cotton and shifting national markets took hold. Rather than lose its agricultural base entirely, the county simply redirected it. Soon, dairy became the new growth industry.
That pivot proved durable. Today, Washington County remains one of New York’s leading dairy counties. In fact, agriculture and its related businesses still contribute more than $200 million annually to the local economy.
That legacy still runs directly to the shelf: Stewart’s Shops sources its milk from family-owned dairy farms across Washington, Saratoga, and Rensselaer Counties, bottled within 48 hours of leaving the farm.
Fort Edward’s Long Run in Paper, Then Power
Early 1800s became a paper mill under a series of owners, and by 1900 the village was a manufacturing hub anchored by International Paper. That mill kept running under new ownership for the next century. It passed from Scott to Kimberly-Clark in the 1980s and later to Irving Tissue, which still produces paper products on the same site today.
Barely four decades after International Paper arrived, in 1942, Fort Edward gained a very different kind of anchor. That’s when General Electric built a capacitor plant on the site of the old Washington County Fairgrounds, then added a second plant in nearby Hudson Falls. By 1957, the two combined GE plants employed 1,800 people and formed the economic base of both villages.
Cracks in the Layers of Industry
As time went on, industries within the county continued to change. By the mid-1940s, Kingsbury’s two major quarries had closed. Just a decade before that, the Glens Falls Feeder Canal, once central to moving goods through the region, had stopped carrying commercial traffic altogether.
GE’s exit, decades later, would eclipse both. First, the company closed its Hudson Falls facility and consolidated operations into Fort Edward, then in 2013 announced it would move the remaining roughly 200 jobs to Florida, a transition completed by 2016.
Ground That Grows Anew
Yet the former GE property in Fort Edward didn’t stay empty for long. Now marketed as Canalside Energy Park, the 80-acre site sits along the Champlain Canal and is listed for sale. Local development officials predict a sale before the end of 2026, bringing an estimated 50 to 100 new jobs once a buyer develops it for its new purpose. The same canal-side location that made the site valuable in 1823 is doing the same job two centuries later.
That pattern of reuse already has a track record here. The 1901 Cambridge Depot has been restored into a pub and live-music venue, and a century-old D&H Railroad Station in Granville is now the Station House Bed & Breakfast, proof that a closed chapter doesn’t have to mean a vacant lot. These buildings do more than house something new; they keep the county authentic to itself even as what happens inside them changes.
What the Population Numbers Show
Losing an employer that size would flatten many small regional economies. Yet Washington County’s population declined only modestly through it: from 63,216 in the 2010 census to 61,302 in 2020, with a 2024 estimate of 59,839. Overall, the population held up well through that loss, declining by only about 5 percent over more than a decade. It lends hard data to a trend you can already see: this county’s broader economy can absorb a loss of that size without the kind of tailspin single-industry communities often experience.
A Broader Workforce Base Today
Of course, manufacturing itself hasn’t stood still, either. Telescope Casual Furniture’s nearly million-square-foot Granville campus keeps design, engineering, and production entirely under one roof in Washington County, still drawing on the same regional timber supply that first brought the company here in 1921. Employees describe an outsized impact for a small community: 250 to 300 jobs from a single employer whose owners still work the factory floor, know their people by name, and listen when something needs fixing.
But legacy employers aren’t the only story here. Nearly one in ten Washington County workers are self-employed, a rate above the New York State average. This is reflected in every town, in family farms, home workshops, and handmade goods sold at local markets rather than in any single factory payroll.
That same pattern shows up in local dairy, too. Argyle Cheese Farmer is a family cheesemaker built on a farmstead that’s been in operation since 1860. In 2020, it partnered with Ideal Dairy Farms, a sixth-generation Hudson Falls dairy, to scale up production of A2 milk and cheese. It’s a prime example of an old family trade finding a new market rather than closing up shop.
Generations at The Same Company
However, Telescope’s family-led ownership isn’t unique in the county. Not far from where GE once stood, Hollingsworth & Vose has operated in Washington County since the 1950s, part of a company history stretching back over two centuries. Employees there describe a workforce with deep generational connectivity, including parents, siblings, and in-laws who worked the same floor before them.
Saint-Gobain employees describe a similar pattern, often applying to a job because a parent or neighbor already worked there and recommended the business as a good place to build a career.
What This Means for Reinvestment
A business weighing where to locate, expand, or reinvest can read that track record as real evidence. It shows a labor pool that has stayed skilled and available even as specific industries have come and gone, and a community whose identity was never dependent on any single employer staying forever.
After all, the county’s economy still works this way: never resting on one industry, always building the next on top of what came before.
Canalside Energy Park is the latest version of that same pattern, an old industrial site preparing to enter the future in a new form. That’s the pattern Washington County Economic Development works to strengthen, and it’s what reinvestment here is actually a bet on.
Ready to explore what’s possible?
Washington County Economic Development supports businesses at every stage of growth. Connect with us to learn how we can help your company start, grow, and succeed here.
