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Hurley & Ulster

• Town of Hurley -- One of the five original towns of the county (the others being Kingston, Fox Hall, Marbletown and New Paltz), Hurley received a formal organization by letters patent from the Crown on October 19,1708. In old days its extent was very much larger than now. Part of it was set off to New Paltz in 1809; to Esopus in 1818; to Olive in 1823; to Rosendale, in 1844; to Woodstock, in 1853. (The latter boundary is still a source of some uncertainty.) The town lies mainly within the folds of the Esopus Creek.
  The oldest settled portion is at Old Hurley, the New Dorp or New Village founded by emigrants from Kingston in 1661. This was the first place attacked in the Indian outbreak of June 7,1663, and was almost entirely destroyed, but was resettled soon after. Some of the old stone houses on the village street date, in their oldest parts at least, from the beginning of the eighteenth century.
• Town of Ulster -- Located almost entirely within the former patent of Kingston, the town of Ulster is oddly shaped. Its main section lies along the Hudson River, but there is also a small and almost completely separated triangle to the southwest which takes in Eddyville. The town was established in December, 1879. The old King's Road to Albany traverses it. At Pine Bush, now the Lake Katrine neighborhood, ran the old stage road, with many taverns. Lake Katrine took its name from Mrs. Catharine Whitaker, who kept a tavern for fishing parties where Cora's Hotel now stands near the lake. Wolves used to burrow under a large rock on the road south of Lake Katrine, near Wolf Rock Hall.
  Flatbush on the Hudson was known for the large numbers of shad and herring caught there. Ice harvesting and storing and brickmaking were later industries.
  Ruby, on the northern boundary of the town, was called Dutch Settlement because in bluestone days most of the surrounding quarry settlements were populated with Irish. It is one of the few places where bluestone is still taken out.
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