The principal farm products are dairying, onions, peaches, apples, hay and potatoes. Milk is condensed at several places in the town. The mineral products are iron, granite, mica, white and blue limestone. The white limestone is very valuable for fluxing purposes and in the manufacture of Portland cement. Large deposits of the same are found in the western part of the town, running from near Florida to the Vernon Valley. The blue limestone is valuable for building purposes and is found very generally in different parts of the town. Clay beds also exist at Florida and at Durland's, from which brick have been manufactured.
The present bonded debt of the town (1907) is $4,950, bearing 4 per cent. interest, which is very small considering the amounts expended in the construction of the new iron bridges in the town during the last thirty years—nearly twenty—and the cost of new road construction and for damages to the town roads and bridges caused by the great flood of 1903, when one bridge was completely destroyed, and nine were damaged, besides the damages to many of the public roads, and other small bridges.
VILLAGES AND HAMLETS.
Warwick
The village of Warwick was known as early as 1719, but was not settled until about 1764. It is the largest village in the town and the only one incorporated. Its area is 395 acres, and its population (1905) was 1,767. It was incorporated under a special act of the Legislature in 1867, and re-incorporated under the general village law in 1901. Built on rolling land in the valley west of the Warwick Mountains, it is an ideal spot for country homes. The land is well drained, the Wawayanda Creek flowing through the center of the town in a southeasterly direction. The mean elevation of the valley is 550 feet, and the nearby mountains rise to a height of 1,200 to 1,400 feet. The varied pastoral scenes of wood, stream and meadow, with here and there a lake, and the tall peaks of the Catskills in the distance greeting the eye from these heights, are said by travelers to equal, if not surpass, anything else of the kind in all the wide world.
Fine roads, affording delightful drives, extend from Warwick, in every direction, some among the neatly kept farms in the valley and others through winding ways among the hills. With such an unrivaled environment, Warwick has grown famous for its own peculiar beauties. One cannot say that our village is quaint or old-fashioned, with swinging gates, grassy lanes, and moss-covered roofs; rather, it has an air of smartness, blended with polished repose. It is a pretty park with velvety lawns, showing to vast advantage groups of flowering shrubs, unmarred by fences, and with the houses well apart, giving an air of freedom from cramped conditions.
Not only the fine mansions that have been built by prosperous country merchants, professional men and city folk, but also the modest homes of the village mechanics and artisans, all show the same individual public spirit, not to be outdone in keeping things spruced up and freshly painted. Here and there are old homesteads where son has succeeded father for generations, yet the old homes look well and becoming in their new and airy clothes. The advent of broad avenues and flag walks have forever effaced the winding trails, and with them much of the sweet Indian legendary has been obliterated. For all these rolling hills were once covered with chestnut, birch, maple and pine trees. There is something pathetic in the passing of the red man, the type of years gone by, as the impress of civilization unrelentingly, step by step, has crowded upon his tepee and forced him westward.
Yet the maples, as planted by our fathers, forming bowers over streets, are more beautiful than the pine tree. We have no "Unter den Linden," but we might claim an "Unter den Maples."
Warwick has been called the Queen Village, also a Village of Homes. If she is not truly the former, she is easily and far away a village of homes.
