The Hope post office opened in 1827, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Hope Falls (1850), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
First census: 608 in 18202020 census: 413199 years
Founding year: the first Hope post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Hope’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Prior to European settlement, the land occupied by present-day Hope was within the territory of the Mohawk tribe, the easternmost tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy and one of the original "Five Nations" which founded the confederacy sometime around 1450. Despite its longtime control by the Mohawks, Hope was largely uninhabited when, on July 31, 1772, proprietor John Bergen and 23 of his associates purchased 19,589 acres of land from the Mohawk Turtle Clan. The purchase documents were signed by Mohawk Chief Hendricks, who drew a turtle in lieu of a signature. The land that Bergen and his associates bought became known as "Bergen's Purchase."
Passages that mention Hope, cut from the printed page as they were published.
A history of the Minisink Region1867 · page 156Read the page →
Read the text
1843, aged seventy-five years four months and twelve days. His public proceedings are mainly included in the early records of the town of Deerpark, which then included that part of the town of Mount Hope where he resided. We believe he was the first Supervisor of the town of Deerpark after its organization in 1798.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Hope, 1827 to 1915
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
