WOODBOURNE, NY

Woodbourne is a hamlet (and census-designated place) in the town of Fallsburg in Sullivan County, New York, United States.

Woodbourne is bordered by the town of Neversink, the hamlet of Grahamsville, the hamlet of Loch Sheldrake, the hamlet of Old Falls and the hamlet of Hasbrouck. The major thoroughfares of Woodbourne are New York State Routes 42 and 52. The center of the hamlet is where the two highways briefly overlap and cross the Neversink River.

Woodbourne is in the Catskills Borscht Belt and in its heyday was home to many summer hotels, bungalow colonies and boarding houses, which are mainly uninhabited throughout most of the calendar year. To this day, the population of Woodbourne and nearby areas increases dramatically each summer with an influx of Orthodox Jewish residents from New York City, New Jersey and other surrounding Jewish population centers. With this, the local economy expands in the warmer months as locally owned small businesses thrive until approximately Labor Day Weekend, marking the typical end of summer.

Early history

According to the Sullivan County Historical Society, the northern part of the Town of Fallsburg was settled by Europeans in the 1780s, many of whom migrated from Ulster County, NY in search of cheap, fertile land. In 1830, a man named Gabriel Ludlum (or Ludlam) relocated his law practice from the nearby hamlet of Hasbrouck, and named the area Woodbourne. Some time after 1831, Mr. Austin Strong, in partnership with Medad T. Morss would establish a tannery, which burnt down in 1866. Woodbourne benefited from being the closest settlement in Sullivan County to Ellenville, which was located along the Delaware & Hudson Canal. The decline of the tanning industry, which resulted from the decline in the hemlock forests in Sullivan county, and the arrival of the NYO&W Railway in the early 1870s led to a decline in Woodbourne's importance, as the railway became the main driver of commerce in the region.

Landmarks and places of Interest