HURLEY AVENUE TO HURLEY MOUNTAIN ROAD
Hurley quickly expanded outward from Main Street. Many houses on Hurley Avenue date back to the 1700s. The area near Hurley Mountain Road has always been a fertile flood plain with farming being the main activity throughout the centuries. The property that contains Schoolhouse Lane once used to be a large dairy farm. Depot Street used to be part of Railroad Avenue, and it sits along Route 209 as a dead end. Many of the houses are still around, but others are only left in memories. [Excerpts and photos taken from the book Images of America: Hurley by Deana Decker, Arcadia Publishing, 2007.]
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Here workers drive the hay wagon, probably to the stables. Hay was needed to feed the horses that did most of the farm work before tractors came along. (Courtesy of Hurley Museum.)
The Newkirk family and a farm worker sit on a wagon at the Newkirk farm. This was one of the more than 20 large farms that used to operate in Hurley, mostly on the Flats off Hurley Mountain Road. Many of those farms were consolidated into a few large sweet corn operations until 2015 when Farm Hub became the largest farming presence in Hurley. (Courtesy of Hurley Museum.)
The New York, Ontario, and Western Railway (O&W) connected areas from as far south as New Jersey north to Oswego on Lake Ontario. A branch line completed in 1902 ran from Kingston to Ellenville, including a stop at this station in Hurley. Coal, feed, fertilizer, and the mail came into the station, and milk and other farm products were sent out. For a time, high school students used the train to go to school in Kingston. The Main Street bridge over Route 209 originally passed over the railroad. Eventually, in the 1950s, the rail branch was no longer used, and the Hurley station was destroyed to make room for the new Route 209. Railroad Avenue was split by Route 209 to form Wynkoop Road and the dead end Depot Street. (Courtesy of George K. VanSickle.)