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Newburgh
is located on the west shore of the Hudson River on the lands of the
Waoranek peoples, who were described by the Europeans who first
encountered them as a close-knit, loving and peaceable group. The
Waoranek were part of the Lenape tribe of the Algonquin nation.
Around them in the bay were other related bands also part of the
greater Lenape-Algonquin peoples. The Waoranek lived in dome-shaped
shelter huts built of bark-covered sapling frames. They grew a few
seasonal crops of beans, corn and squash, and they hunted and fished
along the streams and the great river. They had no horses and walked
everywhere or paddled the river in dugout canoes. Henry Hudson, an
Englishman sailing under contract to the Dutch government, was the
first European to explore the river as far north as Newburgh. His
ship the Half Moon came up the river in to Newburgh bay in 1609, and
his first mate's journal entry for that evening notes this as
"a pleasant place to build a town." Hudson sailed away the
next morning. When the first white people came ashore to settle, it
was the Waoranek who shared and sustained and taught them about this
new world and who gave settlers the very land they lived on — the
concept of land ownership being utterly foreign to them. The
Waoranek moved on to the west and north as Europeans began to build
on and cultivate the acres from the Quassaick Creek to Balmville.
The place name "Quassaick" appears on a map drawn in 1656
by the prominent Dutch settler Adrian Van der Donck. The City of
Newburgh is located sixty (60) miles north of New York City on the
western side of the Hudson River in Orange County, New York. It is a
small, densely settled community of 3.9 square miles bounded by the
Town of Newburgh on the west and north, the Hudson River on the east
and Town of New Windsor on the south. The city and its immediate
suburbs have a population of more than 100,000 persons. The City
offers links to the regional transportation system, including
Interstate I-84 and the New York State Thruway (I-87), navigable
Hudson River access, and proximity to Stewart International Airport;
scenic beauty; a rich cultural and architectural history; Empire
Zone designation for a large portion of the City; and organizations
willing to invest time and capital to stimulate redevelopment.
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