directing to original research and commentary from the history community
on the
web
Every day new insights into our past are discovered. The Historic Preservation Commission now provides a portal to discovery in this web site. Articles and links to sources are fashioned as a tour like the historic house tour education programs it is so well known for. Research papers, preservation projects and responses to questions sent to the Historic Preservation Commission are also published here.

Interpretive history-context land study - Top - an early nineteenth century survey of the bounds of the Corporation of Kingston. Animation - Kingston Commons division into "classes" in Saugerties are moving from this survey to the shaded relief map. Above - image showing the terrain each lot in a class occupies. ...between these the name of each Class is displayed as its class moves.
Mapping of the Kingston Commons
as represented here by the illustration on the left, demonstrates the ongoing study of this by researchers at The Lamb Center.

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for more

the grand tour

Saugerties has always been a destination. From the time Native Americans first came into the land, to Henry Hudson and his fabled visit to our shores, to the 2nd Woodstock Festival, Saugerties has attracted visitors.

The town encompasses a scenic beauty spanning an area from the shores of the Hudson to the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, and yet a car can traverse the distance in under one hour.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Saugerties was continually crossed by travelers journying on the oldest highway linking the colonies. This transportation corridor along with the Palatine immigrants of 1710 that settled west along it wedded trade from this land with its many landings along the Hudson River. This is the origin story of our hospitality culture that continues to today.

In addition to the Palatines, the influence of Dutch, English, and German settlers can be seen in their extant stone houses in the north quadrant, and also in every other part of the town. While there are many similarities in construction techniques of the various groups of settlers, there are also notable differences in building styles. A slide show of about half of the stone houses documented in the Town Historic Resources Survey of 2004/05 is playing above.

The early history was written about extensively during the latter decades of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. These nostalgic tales closed off their commentaries with the arrival of another population; the Scots and Irish; as Saugerties became one of the earliest Early Industrial Revolution sites in America in the mid 1820's. This sparked a rise in innovation and business development that brought about what is most visible to visitors arriving today.

New sources are continually being discovered with material that sheds new light on Saugerties history. For our information age we've found that the period of Saugerties' greatest growth, in the nineteenth century and early twentieth, is extremely well documented in publications and personal records. Those alive then were very aware of being in significantly modern times. We find this attitude quite informative in keeping today's Saugerties in historic perspective.

Being in our own modern period means this Grand Tour of the Internet's capability and resources can bring to you over four hundred years of information about Saugerties. Pulling this together in one place is the Historic Preservation Commission's performance of an educational obligation to sanction the verasity of findings that correctly distribute the knowledge of our history where this can be continually accessed and enjoyed by you.