Rockland County is the smallest county by area in New York outside New York City. It comprises fivetowns, eighteenincorporated villages, eighteencensus-designated places, eighthamlets and eleven defunct communities. Rockland County is designated as aPreserve America Community, and nearly a third of the county's area is parkland. The county has the largestJewish population percentage of any U.S. county, at 31.4%, or 90,000 residents.[5] Rockland also ranked 80th on the list of highest-income counties by medianhousehold income in the United States, with a median household income of $82,534 according to the 2010 census.
In 1609,Henry Hudson was the first majorEnglish explorer to arrive in the area. Hudson, thinking he had found the legendary "Northwest Passage", sailed on theHalf Moon up the river that would one day bear his name, and sailing through present-dayHaverstraw before exploring north in present-dayAlbany.
In the years before 1664 when the area was formally a Dutch colony calledNew Netherland, present-day Rockland did not have formal European settlements. However, individuals did explore the area and made transactions withTappan tribe for land with the idea that it could have future use. For example, in 1640, Dutch CaptainDavid Pietersz. de Vries purchased from natives the area where theSparkill Creek flows into the Hudson River.
In 1664, theBritish Crown assumed control of New Netherland from the Dutch. In June 1664, theBerkeley-Carteret land grant established thecolony of New Jersey, dividing present-day Rockland and Bergen Counties into separate political areas. The northern border of New Jersey was placed in a straight line from theDelaware River at present-dayPort Jervis to the Hudson River at 41 degrees even North latitude, where thePalisades Cliffs pause and give way toSneden's Landing inOrangetown. The state line remains there to this day, though various disagreements along the exact border were had over the years.
In the 1670s, permanent Dutch settlers began to arrive with land grants, starting with the Tappan area.[6] These settlers were eager to escape "city life", moving fromManhattan to Rockland. A number of unique, Dutch-style red sandstone houses still stand, and many place names in the county reveal their Dutch origin.
In 1683, when theDuke of York (who became KingJames II of England) established the first 12 counties of New York,[7] present-day Rockland County was part ofOrange County, known then as "Orange County South of the Mountains".Orangetown was created at the same time under a royal grant, originally encompassing all of modern Rockland County. Around this time, as the English began to colonizeNyack andTappan, the Native Americans began to leave Rockland in search of undisturbed land further north.[6]
The natural barrier of theRamapo Mountains and the size of the county made carrying out governmental activities difficult. At one point, two governments were active, one on each side of the Ramapo Mountains, so Rockland split off from Orange in 1798 to form its own county.[1] That same year, the county seat was transferred from Tappan to New City, where a new courthouse was built.
Haverstraw was separated from Orangetown in 1719, and became a town in 1788; it included the present-dayClarkstown,Ramapo, andStony Point. Clarkstown and Ramapo became towns in 1791, followed by Stony Point in 1865.
During theAmerican Revolution, when control of the Hudson River was viewed by theBritish as strategic to dominating the American territories, Rockland sawskirmishes at Haverstraw, Nyack, andPiermont, and significant military engagements at theBattle of Stony Point, where General "Mad"Anthony Wayne earned his nickname.George Washington had headquarters for a time at John Suffern's tavern, the later site of the village ofSuffern. British MajorJohn André met with American traitorBenedict Arnold near Stony Point to buy the plans for thefortifications atWest Point. André was captured with the plans inTarrytown on his way back to the British lines; he was brought to Tappan for trial in theTappan church, found guilty, hanged, and buried nearby. Yet another important chapter in the story of the Revolution was written on May 5, 1783, when General Washington receivedSir Guy Carleton at theDeWint House, where they discussed terms of a peace treaty. Two days later, Washington visited Sir Guy aboard a British war vessel, H.M.S Perseverance, laying anchor in the Hudson.[8] On this day, the king's navy fired its first salute to the flag of theUnited States of America.
In the decades following the Revolution, Rockland became popular for its stone and brick manufactories. Many buildings in New York City were built with bricks made in Rockland. These products, however, required quarrying in land that many later believed should be set aside as a preserve. Many unsuccessful efforts were made to turn much of theHudson Highlands on the northern tip of the county into a forest preserve.Union Pacific Railroad presidentE. H. Harriman, though, donated land and large sums of money for the purchase of properties in the area ofBear Mountain.Bear Mountain/Harriman State Park became a reality in 1910 when Harriman's widow donated his lands to the state, and by 1914, more than an estimated one million people a year were coming to the park. AfterWorld War I, Rockland County became the most important sausage-making hub in New York.[9][10][11]
In 1911,Letchworth Village, an institution for the mentally disabled opened in Rockland County nearThiells. The institution gained national infamy in 1972, when an investigation byGeraldo Rivera revealed the patients there to have been housed in neglectful conditions. Letchworth closed in 1996.
Rockland remained semi-rural until the 1950s, when thePalisades Interstate Parkway,Tappan Zee Bridge,New York State Thruway, and other major transit arteries were built. In the decades that followed, the county became a maturely developed suburb of New York City. As people moved up from the five boroughs (particularly the Bronx in the early years), the population flourished from 89,276 in 1950 to 338,329 in 2020.
Rockland County lies just north of the New Jersey-New York border, west of Westchester County (across the Hudson River), and south of Orange County. Its east border is formed by theTappan Zee portion of the Hudson River.[12] The county's terrain ranges from 1,283 ft (391 m) ASL on Rockhouse Mountain (northwest of Lake Welch)[13] to approaching sea level along the Hudson River. According to the US Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 199.34 sq mi (516.3 km2), of which 173.55 sq mi (449.5 km2) are land and 25.79 sqmi (66.80 km2) (13%) are covered by water.[14] It is the state's smallest county outside the five boroughs of New York City.
About 30% of Rockland County is devoted to parkland, belonging to either the five towns, incorporated villages, the state, or the county. These parks provide walking and hikingtrails,ballfields,dog runs,historic sites,ponds,streams,salt marshes, andequestrian trails. Some popular state parks include Bear Mountain State Park on the northernmost tip of the county, Harriman State Park, also along the county's northern boundary, andNyack Beach State Park along the Hudson River, with trails connecting toRockland Lake State Park. The county hosts numerous public and privategolf courses, with the towns of Orangetown, Ramapo, Stony Point, and Haverstraw all operating public golf courses within their towns. ThePalisades Interstate Park Commission operates two golf courses in Rockland Lake State Park. Notable private courses in the county includeParamount Country Club, Manhattan Woods Golf Course (designed byPGA greatGary Player), andRockland Country Club (Sparkill).
As of the2020 United States census,[22] 338,329 people and 100,438 households were residing in the county. The population density was 1,950 people per square mile (750 people/km2). The 107,002 housing units averaged 617 units per square mile (238/km2).
Rockland County Demographics
Racial demographics of Rockland according to 2020 US Census Bureau data:[23]
Of the 107,002 households, 38% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 63% were married couples living together, 10% had a female householder with no husband present, and 23% were not families. Around 19% of households were made up of individuals, and 8% had someone living alone who was 65 or older. The average household size was 3.0 and the average family size was 3.5.
The county's age distribution was 28.4% under 18, 8% from 18 to 24, 28% from 25 to 44, 24.30% from 45 to 64, and 12% who were 65 or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 women, there were 95 men. For every 100 women age 18 and over, there were 91 men.
The median income for a household was $93,024 and for a family was $80,000. Males had a median income of $58,000 versus $39,000 for females. The per capita income for the county was $39,286. The mean, or average, income for a family in Rockland County is $73,500 according to the 2004 census. About 6% of families and 12.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 14% of those under age 18 and 8% of those age 65 or over.
As of the2000 United States Census,[24] 286,753 people, 92,675 households, and 70,989 families were residing in the county. The population density was 1,652 people per square mile (638 people/km2). The 94,973 housing units averaged 547 units per square mile (211/km2). Residents live closer together than the census numbers indicate, as 30% of the county is reserved as parkland. About 9% of residents reported speaking Spanish at home, 5%Yiddish, 3%French-based creole, 1.5% Italian, 1.3%Tagalog, 1.3%Hebrew, 1.2% French, and 1% Russian. Other languages spoken at home by at least 1000 people includeMalayalam,Korean,Chinese,German, andPolish.
The county is served by several major highways, includingInterstate 87/287 (theNew York Thruway), opening from Suffern toYonkers in 1955. The old Tappan Zee Bridge opened the same year, connecting Rockland and Westchester, allowing Rockland County's population to grow rapidly. The Palisades Interstate Parkway, a project of master plannerRobert Moses, and built between 1947 and 1958, connects the county directly to theGeorge Washington Bridge due south. TheGarden State Parkway opened in 1955, connecting New Jersey to I-87/287.
Rockland Coaches 11A bus in NanuetHybrid electric bus operated by Transport of Rockland
TheTransport of Rockland operates several local bus routes throughout the county, and the express busHudson Link routes to city centers and train stations in Tarrytown andWhite Plains in Westchester County. TOR provides connections to other neighborhood bus operations – Minitrans[33] and connections to private commuter lines,Rockland Coaches andShort Line providing service toNorth Jersey andNew York City.
Until 1958, Rockland County's eastern side was served by theNew York Central Railroad's passenger service on theWest Shore Railroad fromWeehawken, New Jersey, opposite midtown Manhattan up through Tappan, West Nyack, Congers, and Haverstraw, on to the West Hudson shore cities of Newburgh, Kingston, and Albany. The service ran to West Haverstraw, in the north of the until 1959.[34][35] TheErie Railroad ran train service on theNorthern Branch through the southeastern corner of the county to Nyack up to 1966.[36]
NY Waterway operates aferry service between Haverstraw andOssining in Westchester County for theMetropolitan Transportation Authority. Commuters take the Transport of Rockland's Ferry Express route to the Haverstraw ferry terminal for service toMetro-North'sHudson Line service toGrand Central Terminal. Ferry service is typically suspended in the colder months when the Hudson River freezes over, and commuters must take shuttle buses across the Tappan Zee Bridge.
All of Rockland County falls within the17th Congressional District, along with central and western Westchester County. The district is represented by CongressmanMike Lawler.
On July 10, 2024, Ken Zebrowski resigned his elected position in the New York State Assembly 96th District six months before he was to leaveAlbany for good.[39]
Rockland County Executive
Name
Years Served
Party
John T. Grant
1985–1993
Democrat
C. Scott Vanderhoef
1993–2013
Republican
Edwin J Day
2013–
Republican
Rockland County has a county legislature made up of 17 members, elected from single-member districts. This includes 12 Democrats, 5 Republicans.[40] The Chairman of the Legislature is Democrat Jay Hood Jr. As of January 2025, the legislators are:[41][42]
Rockland Community College appointed County Legislator Dana G. Stilley and Legislative Fiscal Director Moshe Gruber as its unanimous choices of the Rockland County Legislature's bipartisan Multi-Services Committee.[43]
On February 14, 2025 –Valentine's Day, Assemblyman Aron Wieder resigned his Rockland legislature seat in Spring Valley 13th district he kept after starting his position at New York State Assembly at the 97th district.[44]
The five towns of Rockland County are led by town supervisors and town boards. The villages encompassed in the towns are led by mayors and village trustees. As of the November 2023 elections, the town supervisors are:
There are three types of general trial courts in Rockland County: theNew York Supreme Court, the County Court, and theJustice Courts. The Supreme Court is the trial level court of theNew York State Unified Court System, which presents some confusion as the Supreme Court is the highestcourt of appeals in the federal system, as well as in most states (theCourt of Appeals is the highest court in New York). The Supreme Court has broad authority over all categories of cases, both civil and criminal. Generally, the Supreme Court in Rockland County hearscivil cases involving claims in excess of $25,000. While the Supreme Court has jurisdiction overcriminal cases in most counties, this is handled by the County Courts. In Rockland, however, the Supreme Court does exercise jurisdiction over some criminal cases.
The County Court is inferior to the Supreme Court and is authorized to hear criminal cases that have occurred in the county as well as limited jurisdiction over civil cases. The County Court handlesfelony cases exclusively and shares jurisdiction with the town and village justice courts onmisdemeanor cases and other minor offenses and violations. The County Court's jurisdiction on civil cases is limited to those involving less than $25,000.
Each of the towns and 15 of the villages haveJustice Courts, which mostly hear routinetraffic ticket cases, especially from the New York State Thruway and the Palisades Interstate Parkway. They also handledrunk driving charges, lower-level criminalmisdemeanor matters, and occasionally performarraignment onfelonies (most felony proceedings are heard in County Court). These courts generally handle the highest volume of cases.
Like most of the Hudson Valley, Rockland County historically voted Republican but has shifted Democratic in recent years. From 1892 to 1992, Democrats won the county in presidential elections only three times: duringLyndon B. Johnson's 1964 landslide,Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 landslide (when it was the only New York City suburb to vote Democratic), andWoodrow Wilson's 1912 campaign in which the Republican vote was split. Rockland County began trending Democratic in1992 and has voted Republican just twice since then, though races remain more competitive than in neighboringWestchester County, which has consistently delivered Democratic victories since the 1990s. Rockland County supported RepublicansGeorge W. Bush in2004 andDonald Trump in2024, with Trump winning by the largest margin since 1988. Rockland County now holds a unique distinction – it's the only county in the United States that has voted for the winner of the national popular vote in every presidential election since 1980, afterSt. Joseph County, Indiana andCaddo Parish, Louisiana broke their similar streaks by voting Democratic in 2024.
United States presidential election results for Rockland County, New York[46]
TheNew York Boulders (formerly the Rockland Boulders), a member of theFrontier League, was founded in 2011 by former Yankee catcherJohn Flaherty of Pearl River, Clarkstown resident Michael Aglialoro (president of Clarkstown Education Foundation) and Stephen Mulvey (former part-owner of theBrooklyn-Los Angeles Dodgers). The team, owned by Bottom 9 Baseball, play their home games at the 6,362-seat, 16-suiteClover Stadium.
According to Scorecard.org, which integrates data from different sources including theUnited States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 2002, Rockland County ranked among the worst 10% in the United States in terms of air releases.[56] Recent EPA statistics show that a total of 66 presently active Rockland County facilities are currently regulated.[57] In Scorecard's list of Top 10 polluters from 2002, the Lovett generating station in Tompkins Cove is the top polluter, releasing 1,523,339 pounds of toxic emissions.[58] Studies were released in 2000 and in 2004 by the Clean Air Task Force to study the impacts of power plant emissions in the United States. This data for Rockland County shows that a total of $2,150,800 was paid in compensation for numerous illnesses caused by power plant pollution, including asthma attacks, heart attacks and death.[59] The Lovett generating station was closed and dismantled prior to 2014. From 2015 to 2018, the Haverstraw Quarry owned and managed byCRH Tilcon andOldcastle Materials was heavily fined for air and water pollution, including over-blasting, over-excavating, non-viable use of its NESCO unhealthy dust suppression systems and lethal dust & water runoffs into protected waterways. In the period from 2017 to 2020,Suez experienced instances of discolored water and odor complaints. During 2020, the Rockland County Health Dept. andNew York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) Conservationfound/investigated and informed Suez of untreated polluted water at Tilcon operated discharge points at a stream that flows intoLake DeForest. After discovery, Tilcon stopped pumping the waste.[60][61] Higher cancer rates in Rockland County as compared to Manhattan associate towards drinking water quality, aging drink water infrastructure/storm drain runoff concerns.[62][63][64]
Recently,COVID-19 pandemic was first confirmed to have reached Rockland County on March 6, 2020.[65] After the areas ofSpring Valley andMonsey were identified as having the highest infection rates, County Executive Ed Day requested that state emergency management declare those areas a closed containment zone.[66] As of July 4, 2021, there are a total of 47,027 COVID-19 cases and 966 deaths.[67] At 14,450 cases per 100,000, Rockland had thegreatest density of COVID-19 cases of anyNew York county. 47% of the population and 58% of the eligible population (aged 12 and over) have beenvaccinated.[68] TheOrthodox Jewish community, the largest in the country, have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the state; Monsey's is the lowest in the state, at 17.8%, as of June 15, 2021.[69]
News reports confirmed that the first known case ofpolio in the United States in a decade was discovered in Rockland County in July 2022.[70][71]
In 2014, Clarkstown created a first-of-its-kind in New York State 2.3-megawatt solar system consisting of about 4,300 panels on top of a closed, highly regulated, flat shadeless 13-acre section of the former garbage landfill in West Nyack. The unit is sized to generate 3 millionkilowatt-hours annually – enough power to supply about 200 homes, that provides one-third of the electric needs of the Town of Clarkstown government. The Clarkstown solar field project is at the maximum size that is currently allowed by New York State. The installation was projected to save taxpayers as much as $4 million over 30 years by reducing the amount of the town's annual electric bill – which is about $2 million and produce 10 percent of all the electricity that O&R gets throughsolar power. The project was installed in summer 2014, coming online in October.[72][73][74]
Paul W. Adler, the chairperson of the Rockland County's Jewish Community Relations Council, said in a 1997New York Times article that "There are two reasons villages get formed in Rockland. One is to keep theHasidim out and the other is to keep the Hasidim in."[75]
Administrative divisions of New York There are fivetowns in Rockland County. The most populous isRamapo at 148,919, while the least populous isStony Point, at 14,655, according to the 2020 US Census. There are eighteenincorporated villages in Rockland County after the April 2022, dissolution of the Village of South Nyack, twelve of which are located at least partially in the town of Ramapo, and none of which are in Stony Point. There are eighteenCensus-designated places and eightHamlets within the fivetowns of Rockland County.
^Sun, Lena H.; Johnson, Mark (July 21, 2022)."Unvaccinated man in Rockland County, N.Y., diagnosed with polio".Washington Post. RetrievedAugust 12, 2022.The first U.S. case of polio in nearly a decade has been confirmed in an unvaccinated individual in Rockland County, N.Y., local and state health officials announced Thursday.
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