MONTICELLO NY REAL ESTATE
Monticello NY Real Estate is mid-way between New York City and Binghamton. Monticello is the largest community of the Sullivan County Catskills and home to the Mighty M Gaming Facility at Monticello Raceway. Monticello serves as the county seat with the Sullivan County Government Center also in the Village. As of the census of 2010, there were 6,726 people.
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MONTICELLO NY REAL ESTATE
Monticello is located in the Town of Thompson in Sullivan County, New York. It is the seat for the Town of Thompson and the county seat of Sullivan County. The Village of Monticello is in the central part of Thompson, adjacent to New York Route 17. Monticello is one of the largest villages in the county. It is named after the monumental Virginia residence of Thomas Jefferson which he designed himself.
On March 20, 1801, an act was passed authorizing the building of a new turnpike road from the Hudson River to the Delaware through what was then Ulster and Orange counties. There were two important reasons for this undertaking. One was to facilitate travel between Newburgh and the rich coalfields of Pennsylvania and the other was to provide a suitable passage for large droves of cattle and wood products taken from the virgin forests of Sullivan County. The proposed Newburgh and Cochecton Turnpike ultimately brought about the founding of the village of Monticello.
Two brothers, Samuel F. Jones and John Patterson Jones, built Monticello. The turnpike company entrusted Samuel F. Jones to explore the vast forests west of the Mamakating valley to find the best route for the new turnpike.
John joined his brother and in the early part of 1803, they bought two tracts of wilderness totaling 1,861 acres (8 km2) for which they paid $4,613. Since Samuel was occupied surveying the route for the new turnpike, it was left to John to start making immediate improvements to their land. John arrived later that year with eleven men, and after putting up a temporary shelter east of Monticello, they commenced working on a sawmill. After John put the sawmill in operation, he started clearing and seeding the land west of Monticello. He also built a gristmill that was used mostly for grinding their grain.
MONTICELLO NY REAL ESTATE
The final route for the Cochecton-Newburgh Turnpike was determined that spring, and it was precisely where Samuel Jones wanted it. The brothers then determined where to build their intended city. It was at this time that the name Monticello was given to the planned village. The brothers were ardent admirers of Thomas Jefferson, who invented the word from two Latin words meaning “heavenly mountain”, which Mr. Jefferson gave to his home place.
On March 27, 1809, by an act of the Legislature, Sullivan County was created from part of Ulster. In June the new county government was organized and John P. Jones became the first County Clerk. He was later elected state senator and held several other public offices. Samuel F. Jones became one of the county’s first judges and in 1811, when a postal route went into operation from Newburgh to Ithaca, New York, Samuel became Monticello’s first postmaster.
Some pioneer hotels in the county were located in Monticello; the Mansion House and the Rockwell were important places during the Sullivan County resort era. There was a lot of summer activity and entertainment in Monticello. During the early 1900s, there was a Driving Park Association that held races in the village.
In 1910 the “Lyceum”, the largest theater in the county opened in Monticello. It was successful until 1922 when the moviegoers visited the Rialto Theater, the new showplace in town. The Monticello Amusement Park was popular until it burned in 1932. Monticello played host to the Sullivan County Fair for over fifty years until it closed in 1931. Although few of Monticello hotels successfully made the transition into the later resort age, the village continued to draw the tourists who stayed at nearby hotels and bungalow colonies.