Roxbury Town

Delaware County, New York

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Roxbury Town Hall is located at 53690 State Highway 30 (Main Street), Roxbury NY 12474.
Phone: 607‑326‑7641.

Neighborhoods

Beginnings [1]

The town of Roxbury, settled in the late eighteenth century, was formed from the town of Stamford in 1799. Roxbury is an interior, mountainous district, broken by the streams and tributaries of the Delaware River. Roxbury's earliest European settlers were John C. Keator and Joseph Keator from Ulster County. The Keators purchased a farm on Lot 38 of the Hardenburgh Patent, the immense eighteenth-century land grant that included land in the Catskills between the Rondout and Delaware rivers. This settlement in the Batavia Kill Valley, southeast of the hamlet of Roxbury, became one of the most prosperous agricultural areas of the town. Other early settlers arrived from the Fairfield, Connecticut area and established farms near the hamlets of Stamford, Grand Gorge and Roxbury. By 1805 the center of industry was a hamlet called Shackville, south of Roxbury. Later, trade moved north to Hubbell's Corners and finally settled in Roxbury, which became the town seat. Roxbury's importance increased with the coming of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad in the 1870s, as the railroad provided a convenient way to ship agricultural products to urban markets. With the railroad also providing easy access to the mountains, the town of Roxbury developed a substantial tourist industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and saw a period of increased growth.

  1. Delibert, Steven, Ulster and Delaware Railroad Historical Society, and LaFrank, Kathleen, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, Ulster & Delaware R. R. Depot & Mill Complex, nomination document, 2002, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.

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