The next significant date in New Paltz history is probably 1828, when the New Paltz Classical School was founded, the forerunner to the current college. Until the mid-1950s, the school—known as the Normal School and then the State Teachers College—specialized in teacher training. SUNY New Paltz has a robust Education department to this day.
The college, with an enrollment of 8,000, in many ways dominates the life of the community. (The population of the village is only 6,000.) The 216-acre SUNY New Paltz campus is situated on a hill above the village’s downtown, and the economy of the surrounding businesses is largely driven by the needs of the students (coffee, art supplies, pizza, beer, cigarettes, socializing with other students in liquor-available environments) and visiting parents (food, lodging). (Interesting, unverifiable fact: Jacobson Faculty Tower, the highest point on the campus at 120 feet, is thought to be the tallest building on the west side of the Hudson between New York City and Albany.)
In any college town, there’s bound to be town-and-gown tension. The concerns of an academic institution and its thousands of transient, barely-in-their-majority attendees do not overlay perfectly with those of a municipality and its citizens, who may not take kindly to packs of inebriated college students making merry outside their window at two in the morning. But Mayor Dungan thinks that the days of mutual distrust are over. “There’s a lot less tension than there used to be,” says Dungan, a SUNY New Paltz alumnus, citing the close communication between his office and the college, and his attendance at student association meetings, as the well as the college newspaper’s coverage of village government. “We’re a college town,” says Dungan. “Students are transient; they’re only here for four years. But students as a segment of the population are a permanent fact of life in New Paltz.”
Killing for Traffic
When asked what the biggest problem facing New Paltz is, the dozen or so people I interviewed for this article said the same thing: Traffic. Driving in New Paltz can be a bottlenecked, rage-inducing experience. To get anywhere in New Paltz, you most likely need to drive on Main Street (a tight two lanes), but that road has three state highways and the Thruway converging on it, and it’s the primary east-west corridor in the area. On Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends, for instance, when the New Paltz/Woodstock Crafts Fair hits the Ulster County Fairgrounds, cars can be backed up in the hundreds trying to get in and out of town. “There are communities that would kill for our traffic,” says Mayor Dungan. “That people want to come to the area is one of the driving factors in our local economy.” When asked what might be done about the traffic problem, Dungan sighed. “There is no easy solution,” he said, explaining that the village was laid out before the advent of the automobile. The charm of the village’s narrow streets and late 19th-century storefronts rely on this crowded, antiquated quality.
Stuart Bigley remembers a sleepier version of New Paltz in the 1970s. “When I first moved here, you could walk down the middle of the street blindfolded,” he says. “You could hear a car coming from a long distance away. There wasn’t what anyone would refer to as traffic back then.”
One of the causes of all this traffic lies outside of town. It’s the Shawangunk Ridge, or The Gunks, as they are affectionately known. Amazingly, most of this land, which is on the Nature Conservancy’s list of the Earth’s “Last Great Places,” is undeveloped. Twelve thousand acres of protected land stretch from Cragsmoor in the west through Minnewaska State Park and the Mohonk Preserve just above New Paltz. The Gunks are a world-class rock climbing destination, as well as a recreation hub for hikers, bikers, snowshoers, and cross-country skiers.
The scenic beauty of the region draws visitors in such numbers that Minnewaska State Park has to turn people away on summer weekends. It’s that beauty that G. Steve Jordan has been chronicling in his photographs for over 10 years. “I try and transcend the landscape itself,” says Jordan. “I hope my photos evoke a feeling similar to the feeling of being out there.” He’s also witnessed the amazing connection people have to the landscape. “More than once, people have been looking at my images and tears have come to their eyes,” says Jordan. “And I don’t think it’s anything I did. People have a such a strong connection to the natural beauty of the area.”