Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Most of Shokan was built recently: 9% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 1965. Below: 5 old photos and papers from 1875 on and old-book passages.
The Shokan post office opened in 1842, the earliest record of the town by name.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
From Wikipedia’s history of Shokan.
It was relocated to its present site in the early 20th century after the construction of Ashokan Reservoir on the land it originally occupied.
The Olive and Hurley Old School Baptist Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Passages that mention Shokan, cut from the printed page as they were published.
town Commons. The Hurley Patentees’ settlements began about the middle of the eighteenth century. George Middagh settled near Olive Bridge in 1740, where he was joined in 1742 by Samuel Cox, and in 1745 by William Nottingham. John Crispell located just east of Shokan in 1747 and Hendrick Crispell at Shokan in 1760, on the place now owned by Zadoc P. Boice and others. West Shokan is built principally on this farm.
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Two miles above is West Shokan, a railroad station called Shokan. Matthews & North are large merchants here, requiring the services of four clerks. The trade is large, much of it coming from the town of Denning. Z. P. Boice, now Sheriff of Ulster County, has a saw-mill which employs fifteen men and four teams. Logs are drawn six to eight miles.
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The grist-mill at Shokan was built by Andrew Hill, some time prior, to the year 1890, on a site near which stands the present grist-mill of Charles L. Houck, and the Talmadge Eckert house was built by Mr. Hill in 1797. There were also two saw-mills built at Shokan about 1805, — one, perhaps, at an earlier date. The first grist-mill at Bishop's Falls was of quite early date.
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The first school-house probably ever built in tins town was at Tongoro, near the Stephen Davis place of recent years. ’There was also one on the fiat near Shokan bridge, on the west side of the creek, that was carried away by a freshet, hut the date of its building is uncertain. The next, probably, was one built at Olivo City, embracing what was then Tongore and a part of Bushkill. At a later period the city school-house was discontinued, and a house built
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.
3 decades in the archive, from the 1870s to the 1910s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Shokan’s page.
Retake this view · +15The country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited on each place’s page.
Writers, athletes, leaders and more, ranked by how widely they’re known.
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
Each neighbor’s History grade, on the same three inputs.
The Shokan post office opened in 1842, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
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 Wikimedia Commons (6), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people 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.
c. 1918
c. 1918
2017