Rondout, New York

Rondout (pronounced "ron doubt"), is situated on the Hudson, at the mouth of Rondout Creek. Originally a maritime village serving the nearby city of Kingston, New York, Rondout merged with Kingston in 1872. It now includes the Rondout-West Strand Historic District.

Rondout borders the Rondout Creek. The creek empties into the Hudson through a large, protected tidal area. Rondout was established by the Dutch in the seventeenth century as an Indian trading post; furs were brought from the inland areas down the Rondout, Walkill and Esopus Creeks and sent by boat down the Hudson River to New York City.

The name derives from the fort, or redoubt, that was erected near the mouth of the creek. The Dutch equivalent of the English word redoubt (meaning a fort or stronghold), is reduyt. In the Dutch records of Wildwyck, however, the spelling used to designate this same fort is invariably Ronduyt during the earliest period, with the present form rondout (often capitalized) appearing as early as November 22, 1666.

As late as the 1820s, Rondout was a small hamlet. As the Philadelphia coal market was saturated with Lehigh coal, bringing the price down, William and Maurice Wurts developed the Delaware and Hudson Canal as a way to deliver their anthracite from Carbondale, Pennsylvania to New York City. After the opening of the canal in 1828, the area of Rondout rapidly transformed from farmland into a thriving maritime village. The last several miles of the canal, which linked coal mines in northeastern Pennsylvania to the Hudson River and markets beyond, followed Rondout Creek to reach the Hudson River. Irish laborers came to dig the canal and many of them stayed to work on it after its completion. Businessmen established stores to serve the workers. Steamboats, sloops, schooners, and barges loaded with passengers and cargo regularly left the port bound for New York City. New industries developed such as brick and cement manufacturing, bluestone shipping, and ice-making. As canal traffic increased, homes and commercial businesses were built along the slope upward from the Rondout Creek.

By 1840, the village had a population of fifteen hundred, two hundred residences, two churches, six hotels and taverns, twenty-five stores, three freighting establishments, a tobacco factory, a gristmill, four boat yards, two dry docks, and the office and dock of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company.

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