Rosendale is a township situated in central Ulster County, New York. It is located roughly 80 miles from NYC. The New York State Thruway (I-87) passes through Rosendale, although the nearest exits are New Paltz (Exit 18) and Kingston (Exit 19), both approximately 20 minutes driving time away.

Founded in 1844, Rosendale was created from property partitioned off neighboring towns, in order to accommodate the natural cement industry for taxation purposes. Once upon a time, the best quality cement available anywhere in the world came from Rosendale. National landmarks such as the U.S. Capitol, the Washington Monument, the bases of the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge, the Hoover Dam, and many others, including New York City's Grand Central Terminal were constructed using Rosendale cement.

Today, the long-empty underground cement mines are a tourist attraction. Other historic resources include the abandoned Delaware & Hudson Canal, and the old trestle for the Wallkill Valley Railroad, pictured above (the oldest remaining curved trestle, and once the highest bridge in North America). One of the coolest places to visit in Rosendale is the Century House Historical Society. These are the people who preserve Rosendale's colorful past (and present); they own the A.J. Snyder Estate, home to Rosendale's former Century Cement company, featuring the surreal and embryonic Widow Jane Mine. Membership is tax-deductible and only $15./yr. Please help support this wonderful resource and national historic site. Equally groovy, but more cryptic, is the secluded Stone Mountain Farm, home to the Center For Symbolic Studies, which explores ideas of the late Joseph Campbell. Come late November, pucker up, for Rosendale anually hosts the world-famous International Pickle Festival. Sometimes Rosendale has a really big Street Festival, but alas, it repeatedly goes defunct due to internal personality disputes & nasty town politics. One of the few vegetarian restaurants in the county is the Rosendale Cafe, featuring live music.

Locally, Rosendale is known for its kooky politics... resulting from a mixed population of "old-timer rednecks" and urban-transplanted "hippies, faggots & artists." In reality, the true "old-timer" families left town shortly after the cement and canal industries dried up. The current "old-timers" are mostly throwbacks from the 1940s and later. An article describing Rosendale's weird brand of politics appeared in the New York Times concerning Rosendale on August 24, 1998 called "Bad Vibes in a Hippy Haven." More recently, a eugenics piece was published in the NY Times, dated February 8, 2003, concerning Rosendale's long-standing reputation for harboring freakish inhabitants, titled "Bad Seed or Bad Science?"

Due to Rosendale's arrangements of mountains, rivers, and abandoned cement mines, there are precious few areas in town suitable for new development. This has kept the population from growing too rapidly, and preserves a peculiar architectural quaintness. Coupled with a long-running local recession, and overall poor economy, young hipsters, artists, yuppies, lesbians and homosexuals have migrated north from New York City, seeking affordable refuge from the ills of urban living. Rosendale is a bedroom community, owing to the fact that right-wingers have decimated the downtown business area on Main Street. Commercial tranquility allows the older rednecks to usually ignore the newcomers, except for election time, when the fags run for office and all hell breaks loose!

Now, the purpose of this website is to illuminate inhabitants of Planet Earth to another world called Rosendale, where a former town supervisor once brazenly stated at a Town Board meeting, "We're NOT accountable to the Constitution." Rosendale has an "official" website, and a Chamber of Commerce, but nowhere else will you be informed about how Rosendale enforced a Zoning Law for 20 years which was never officially passed. The straight talkers will neglect to tell tales of the wackadoodle town judge, who used to go around spreading nasty rumors about his constituents; or how the old Village of Rosendale was dissolved in 1978, as an art project for the Mayor's college class. Only rosendale.info has the complete poop about this unusual burg. There are stories from Rosendale which would make hair grow on your knuckles! Maybe it's something in the water, or a strange radioactive gas seeping out of the ground; whatever causes the "Rosendale Phenomenon," Rosendale remains a very strange place. Almost all the sane people moved away years ago. More to come...