Marbletown's Stone Ridge and High Falls Story Starts in 1669

Marbletown has deep Ulster County texture. The town history says Marbletown was settled as early as 1669 and received its patent on June 25, 1703. By 1672, there were fifty-three houses on the site of the village of Marbletown.

The same history describes a hilly upland town broken by valleys and streams, with the Esopus in the north and the Rondout in the southeast corner at High Falls. Revolutionary-era civic movement also runs through it. After Kingston burned in 1777, courts met for a time at Marbletown, and the Council of Safety moved there before going to Hurley and then Poughkeepsie. That gives Marbletown direct color through stone-settlement antiquity, waterways, Stone Ridge and High Falls hamlets, and temporary wartime government.

Stone Ridge and High Falls make that history easier to picture. One name points toward old inland settlement and ridge roads; the other points toward water, mills, and the Rondout edge.

That is the pleasure of Marbletown. It has enough recorded history to feel old, but the story is still readable in ordinary geography: hills, streams, hamlet names, old roads, and the way Ulster County towns keep folding past and present together.