Orange County History
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Pioneer of new modes of transportation
Orange County’s first overnight visitor from Europe was the explorer Henry Hudson, who dropped anchor in Newburgh Bay in 1609. European settlement did not follow immediately, however. The Orange County created on November 1, 1683 included half of today’s Orange County, but also all of present day Rockland County, where there were a small number of settlers.
Orange’s first European settler was Patrick Macgregorie whose arrival is recorded only as “before 1685.” His Scottish colony on the Hudson River was followed by a settlement of French Huguenots near the Delaware, of German Palatines at Newburgh on the Hudson, and of other nationalities as the interior parts of the county were opened up.
Growth was slow but gradual until the Revolutionary War, when Orange County became a significant military objective. Capture of the narrow twisting river passage through the Hudson Highlands would probably have enabled the British forced to isolate New England from the Middle Atlantic and the South. On the other hand, the Americans needed a safe route so that the important New England patriot leaders could reach the provisional capital of the new nation, usually in the Philadelphia area.
During the closing years of the war, Washington’s entire Northern Army was based around winter headquarters at New Winsor. Some of the fortifications at West Point have also been preserved and can be visited. In 1850, Washington’s headquarters (the Jonathan Hasbrouck House) in Newburgh became the first American building to be preserved specifically as an historic house museum. Orange County is also the site of the first sports site listed as a Registered National Historic Landmark – harness horses raced since 1838 at Goshen’s half mile Historic Track.
Although the county was created in 1683, it did not immediately acquire officials of its own, with New York County’s (Manhattan) officials acting in the same capacity for Orange. A temporary method of local government was established in 1701, followed by a permanent for in 1703. While modifications were of course made, this form of government lasted until 1969, when it was replaced by a county executive form of government under a locally-drafted county charter.
From the earliest European settlement, Orange County has pioneered new modes of transportation. The Old Mine Road, running through the western part of Orange County, was the first European-built road of more than 100 miles on the American continents. Turnpikes were built annually. Newburgh capitalists followed up Robert Fulton’s success by establishing regular steamboat runs to the growing metropolis. In the western part of the county, the Delaware and Hudson Canal was built to carry coal from the Pennsylvania coalfields to market, establishing communities like Bolton’s Basin, Port Jervis, and Port Orange – sixty-five miles from the ocean. The Erie Railroad was built through the county in the 1840’s.
Orange County played a significant role in the establishment of the principle of freedom of the press, as one of the articles for which John Peter Zanger was tried (and acquitted) was a letter to the editor prepared by the voters of Orange County’s Goshen Precinct thanking their assemblyman for his services in the most recent session of the Legislature – services that Governor Cosby did not appreciate, since Assemblyman Matthews had spent the previous session attacking Cosby for land-jobbing.
In the Colonial era, wheat was the county’s primary product. The county’s chief industrial production involved iron and iron products. The ore from southeastern Orange (and neighboring parts of Rockland and New Jersey) was used continuously from 1737 until 1923, when richer western ores put the mines out of business. The first commercial butter factory and the first commercial oatmeal factory were located in Orange County.
People throughout Orange County cherish their past, and they look to build a future that will prove equally inspiring to their descendants.