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Esopus & Ulster Park

• Town of Esopus -- Noted today for its fine fruit farms and its explosives factory, Esopus keeps many of the old stone houses built by its Dutch settlers when its territory still lay in the towns of Kingston, Hurley and New Paltz. It was made a town on April 5, 1811. Port Ewen, its principal village, originated in 1851, as the coal terminal of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company. In 1865 the company moved its terminal to Newburgh, and a population of Irish workers who had settled under the hill found employment on the boats of the canal or the river, and in the ice, brick and shipping industries.
  About thirty years ago the Hercules Powder Company, an important producer of industrial blasting caps and military detonators, located one of its factories in the village, giving employment to many hundreds of men and women. Some workers have been with them continuously for thirty years, and many for twenty-five years. The plant received the coveted Army-Navy "E" award for outstanding achievement in the production of war materials on April 13,1943. The award was made by Colonel W. E. Larned, commanding officer of the Picatinny Arsenal, of Dover, New Jersey, and was accepted by E. P. Rochford, superintendent, and Pratt Van Kleeck, representing the employees. The master of ceremonies was Roscoe V. Elsworth. Individual "E" pins were presented to a group of seven representative men and women: Jennie Comerata, Elbert Terpenning, Bessie Reilly, Charles Rowe, Bessie Zimmerman, Ethel Quick and James Wesley.

  Esopus has always been noted for its fishing grounds along the Hudson River, in early times called the Esopus Meadows. The oldest fisherman ever to apply for a license in the State of New York was a resident of Esopus, Augustus Cole, who in the spring of 1939, at the age of ninety-five, obtained a license to net herring. Mr. Cole was also the last surviving Civil War veteran in the county. He died at his Esopus home in October, 1939.
  A prominent resident of Ulster Park (Klein Esopus), is C. Chester DuMond, who was appointed State Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets in 1943 by Governor Thomas Dewey. He has previously held the posts of president of the New York State Farm Rureau, chairman of the Conference Board of State Farm Organizations, and member of the New York State Emergency Food Commission. Mr. DuMond, who was born in North Tarrytown fifty-six years ago, has been a successful apple grower in Ulster Park for the past twenty-nine years.
  Near the village of Esopus, formerly known as Elmore's Corners, the country seat and fruit farm of Robert Livingston Pell was in the years following the Civil War the wonder of the town and indeed of the whole Hudson River region. Mr. Pell, a New York City man, was a pioneer in introducing scientific methods of fruit raising and shipping. With his new method of sweating apples in a large, ventilated stone building, he was successful in preserving them so that they could be shipped abroad, and made Ulster County apples famous through the United States and Europe. He also specialized in grapes and in raising fish from impregnated eggs, and had his own large wharf and storage buildings at Pelham Landing. Mr. Pell died in 1880 and the property is now owned by Mount St. Alphonsus Monastery.
  In the summer of 1904, Alton B. Parker, Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals from 1897 to 1904, conducted from his home at Rosemount on the Hudson his campaign for the Presidency of the United States as candidate for the Democratic party. His widow, Mrs. Amelia Campbell Parker, still resides there and is known for her historical and patriotic interests. She is a trustee of the New York State Historical Association.
  Perrine's Bridge at Rifton in this town is said to be the oldest covered bridge in New York State.

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