This is one of the younger towns of Orange County, only those of Tuxedo and Woodbury having been born later. It is, in fact, only about thirty-five years old. But for scenic beauty and native charm it easily outranks every other town in this county, if not all others on the Hudson River. The fame of the Hudson River Highlands is worldwide, and it is in this little town that the culmination of this native grandeur and picturesque beauty is reached. No one who has ever sailed up or down the Hudson, and who has not, will spend a moment wondering why this township was thus named.
The general shape or contour of the town, laterally, may be roughly classed as triangular. But the topographical surface is far more difficult to classify. It has the most extended river frontage of any town in the country, it being some nine or ten miles, beginning at Cro' Nest, in the town of Cornwall on the north, and reaching below Fort Montgomery, to the Rockland County line.
It is bounded on the north by the town of Cornwall, on the east by the Hudson River, on the south by Rockland county and the town of Woodbury, and on the west by Woodbury.
The area of this young town, as now estimated by the Orange supervisors, is 15,514 acres. In 1879 it was placed at 9,324-1/2 acres. This fractional total would seem to indicate that a very careful survey had been made previous to that time. But nobody has been quite able to explain just how this unique engineering feat was accomplished. Looking at the town from the river, the task presents many features of serious import, even to the mountain engineer.
The whole thing was valued at $330,600 by the assessors of 1879. But of course there was nothing allowed for sentiment or native grandeur in that cold, business estimate. Perhaps such things really had no cash value at that time, if indeed they have now. The tax of the town that year amounted to $2,896.67. In 1906 the total value of this real estate was placed at $857,112. Upon this amount a tax of $8,610.67 was levied. This was made up as follows: $3,474.20, general fund; $4,423.37, town audits; $250.02, sworn off taxes; and $0.33, treasurer's credits.
TITLE TO THE LANDS.
Concerning these, previous to the Revolution, little is definitely known. The lands around the Point, from which West Point takes its name, and to the north and west thereof, were originally granted by the British Crown to Captain John Evans. In 1723 these lands, having been re-assumed by the Crown, the larger portion was granted to Charles Congreve upon condition that he, or his heirs and assigns, should settle there and cultivate at least three acres out of every fifty acres of land conveyed to him in the grant. The inference is, therefore, that the first buildings at West Point were erected about that time.
This Congreve tract comprised some 1,463 acres, which included the northern portion of the Point. But the records do not give the names of these early white settlers. In March, 1747, another portion of this John Evans tract, covering 332 acres, was granted to John Moore, on the same conditions contained in the first grant to Congreve. This tract adjoined the southwest corner of the Congreve Patent. John Moore afterward purchased the Congreve tract and thus became the owner of 1,790 acres in the vicinity of the Point. This he subsequently devised to his son, Stephen Moore, a merchant of Caswell, N. C. Then after a forty-year tenure of this land by the Moore family it was finally sold to the United States Government, pursuant to an act of Congress passed July 5, 1790. The deed of transfer was executed by Moore, December 10, of the same year. The price paid was $11,085. The necessity of this purchase was urged upon Congress by Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury, and also by Henry Knox, who was then Secretary of War, who finally conducted the negotiations for the purchase for the Government.
Captain John Evans obtained his original grant on petition, March, 1694, from Governor Dongan, who had purchased the land from the Esopus Indians. It was described as extending "from Murderer's Creek back," This stream finds the Hudson at Cornwall. Captain Gee, of the ancient sloop Federal, who brought stores to West Point between 1790 and 1810, seems to have owned a dwelling house near the Point about that time, when it was known as Gee's Point.
Adjoining the Congreve Patent on the south was one of the six tracts originally granted to Gabriel and William Ludlow, October 18, 1731, under the conditions of settlement already named. This tract seems to have passed to many successive owners, as follows: