Wallkill Valley Land Trust’s 7th Annual Historic House Tour

This year’s tour explores the fascinating legacy of New Paltz’s Huguenots and their expansion northward along the eastern banks of the Wallkill River to Bontecoe on the Esopus border. The “Patentees”  – as the first dozen settlers were called – built their houses on the terrace above the Wallkill River where vistas sweep west to the Shawangunk Mountains. Their descendants moved beyond New Paltz to cultivate the rich alluvial soil of the floodplain.

Historic Huguenot Street will offer a special orientation and exhibition at the DuBois Fort, designed especially for this occasion, as well as a private visit to one of its stone houses rarely open to the public. Beyond the initial settlement, descendants of the Patentees built houses and barns along the meandering river near the First Highway, which was originally conceived as a way to get to Church on Sundays – in New Paltz or Kingston. The tour presents seven of the town’s most unusual and important houses and farms dating from the early 18th century to the mid-twentieth. All were either built by Huguenot descendants or upon Huguenot lands. They include examples of an early stone house, a charming modern interpretation of a Dutch-style stone dwelling, a stunning Greek Revival  brick beauty,  as well as a fanciful late nThis year’s tour explores the fascinating legacy of New Paltz’s Huguenots and their expansion northward along the eastern banks of the Wallkill River to Bontecoe on the Esopus border. The “Patentees”  – as the first dozen settlers were called – built their houses on the terrace above the Wallkill River where vistas sweep west to the Shawangunk Mountains. Their descendants moved beyond New Paltz to cultivate the rich alluvial soil of the floodplain.