Settled in the middle part of the 18th Century, the village grew from its agricultural roots as a stopover on the
King's Highway between
Philadelphia and
Newburgh, New York. During the American War for Independence, British General
Burgoyne and his army camped on the outskirts of the village after their defeat at the
Battle of Saratoga. Also during the American Revolution,
Martha Washington stayed at Baird's Tavern, now located on Main Street in the Village. In 1859, Grinnell Burt along with other local businessmen met to form a new rail line from the
Erie Railroad's main line at
Greycourt to the village as a means of transporting milk and other agricultural products to market. The
Warwick Valley Railroad was chartered on March 8, 1860, and the line was completed in 1862 functioning essentially as a 10-mile long branch of the 6-foot gauge Erie. Almost all of the commercial brick buildings in the village date to this period including the Dispatch Building and Demerest Hotel which were built to house passengers from the trains. When the line was extended to Belvidere, then to Allentown, the Warwick Valley Railroad was merged into the
Lehigh and Hudson River Railway in 1882 with Warwick serving as the headquarters for the 90+ mile line for its entire history. The railyard first established at the South Street terminus was replaced first with a roundhouse and machine shop at Elm Street, then in 1910 with a full complex off of River Street (the present site of Jones Chemical). The L&HR served as a major "bridge line" of freight traffic between Pennsylvania and the enormous railyard at
Maybrook, New York where freight would be forward to New England over the vitally important
Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge. With the advent of the age of the automobile, the small passenger business that existed dried up and the last passenger train was run between Warwick and Greycourt on July 8, 1939. The L&HR was the largest single employer in the village of Warwick, but with the decline of rail and the burning of the Poughkeepsie Bridge in May 1974, the L&HR was deemed irrelevant and the bankrupt railroad was folded into
Conrail in 1976. Without any link to a major highway, Warwick avoided the rapid development of other town in Orange County at the beginning of the 21st Century and maintains its small town charm to this day. along Routes 94 and 17A in the center of the village are listed on the
National Register of Historic Places as the
Warwick Village Historic District. Buildings there range from the oldest in the village, the 1764 Shingle House, preserved and maintained by the Historical Society of the Town of Warwick, also known as the Warwick Historical Society, to large early 20th-century cottages built by weekend vacationers from New York City. ==Geography==