New Paltz is a village in Ulster County located in the U.S. state of New York. It is approximately north of New York City and south of Albany. The population was 7,324 at the 2020 census.
New Paltz is located within the town of New Paltz, and is home to the State University of New York at New Paltz, founded in 1828. The town is served by exit 18 on the New York State Thruway, as well as state routes 299, 32, and 208; it is also about 90 minutes from both New York City and Albany.
History The Elting Memorial Library, Guilford-Bower Farm House, Jean Hasbrouck House, Major Jacob Hasbrouck Jr. House, Huguenot Street Historic District, Lake Mohonk Mountain House Complex, New Paltz Downtown Historic District, and The Locusts are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Early development
New Paltz was founded in 1678 by French Huguenots settlers, including Louis DuBois, who had taken refuge in Mannheim, Germany, for a brief period of time, being married there in 1655, before emigrating to the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1660 with his family. Mannheim was a major town of the Palatinate (in German, the Pfalz), at the time a center of Protestantism. The settlers lived in Wiltwyck (present day Kingston, New York) and in 1677 purchased a patent for the land surrounding present day New Paltz from a Lenape tribe known as the Esopus.
The people of Mannheim use a dialect form of the name Pfalz without the "f", pronouncing it "Paltz." Records of the New Paltz Reformed Church, which was formed in 1683, show the name of the settlement was first expressed not in German, nor in English, but in French: Nouveau Palatinat. The community was governed by a kind of corporation called the Duzine, referring to the 12 partners who acquired the royal patent. That form of government continued well past the time of the American Revolution, by special action of the New York State legislature.
The or so of the patent, stretching to the Hudson River and augmented soon by the other patents on the south, were eventually divided among those twelve partners, their relatives, and a few friends into large plots – part wilderness and part farm. The farms were grouped principally around the heights west and east of the Wallkill River. The commercial center serving the agricultural base was located on the east shore of the Wallkill River, in the area where the first settlers had built their shelters. The street is now known as Huguenot Street.
There, the church, schools, blacksmith, seamstresses, and stores flourished for the benefit of farmers who required goods such as seed, tools, clothing, and food not available on all farms, including alcoholic beverages. The church, which was also used as a school, was located here. Many of the buildings still stand today, as a living museum community.
Population slowly spread from the Wallkill up along the street now known as North Front Street and then along what is now Chestnut Street. In the 19th century, development continued along what is now Main Street. The secession of the town of Lloyd and parts of Shawangunk, Esopus, and Gardiner, between 1843 and 1853, reduced New Paltz to its present size. In 1887, the village of New Paltz was incorporated within the eponymous town.
Higher education has been one of the main concerns of the community since the 1830s, with facilities on Huguenot and North Front streets. Late in the nineteenth century, the college was built in the area of Plattekill Avenue and Manheim Boulevard, where the State University of New York at New Paltz now stands.
The Wallkill Valley Railroad reached New Paltz by 1870, and provided passenger service through the town until 1937. After the rail line's closure in 1977, the section of the corridor running through New Paltz was converted to the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail, and the former train station in New Paltz was renovated as a restaurant, The Station.
Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of , of which is land and (1.70%) is water.
The Wallkill River runs north along the western border of New Paltz, flowing into the Rondout Creek and eventually the Hudson River.
Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 6,034 people, 1898 households, and 586 families residing in the village. The population density was . There were 1,957 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the village was 73.42% white, 7.79% black or African American, 0.27% Native American, 7.01% Asian, 0.10% Pacific Islander, 8.35% from other races, and 3.07% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 11.93% of the population.
There were 1,898 households, out of which 12.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 21.1% were married couples living together, 7.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 69.1% were non-families. 41.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.03 and the average family size was 2.66.
In the village, the age of population was disbursed as such: 6.9% under the age of 18, 58.7% from 18 to 24, 19.0% from 25 to 44, 10.1% from 45 to 64, and 5.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 22 years. For every 100 females, there were 80.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 78.8 males.
The median income for a household in the village was $21,747, and the median income for a family was $51,186. Males had a median income of $33,103 versus $22,935 for females. The per capita income for the village was $11,644. About 11.8% of families and 36.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18.6% of those under age 18 and 12.2% of those age 65 or over.
Politics The mayor is Alexandria Wojcik, who assumed the role in an acting capacity on January 1, 2026, after former mayor Tim Rogers was elected as the Supervisor of the Town of New Paltz. She was formally appointed by the board on February 18, 2026, making her the first openly LGBTQ mayor of New Paltz and the first woman to hold the office since 1983. Wojcik serves as the Ulster County lead for the Forward Party and is a member of ForwardNY.
The board of trustees meets on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month at 7:00 p.m. at the village hall. Sewer and water districts for the village are maintained through a department of public works. Rehabilitation of the sewer system, which has been found to overflow raw sewage onto local streets and into the Wallkill, is expected under a consent order agreed to in 2003.
Activism The Women in Black have a small-but-active chapter in New Paltz that has been protesting in front of Elting Memorial Library weekly since November 2001. In 2024, over 200 activists rallied at the library to demonstrate their "outrage" over the arrest of over 100 students at SUNY New Paltz who had created a Gaza solidarity encampment.
Electoral history Village mayoral elections are held every four years, with the mayor serving a four-year term. Prior to 2015, elections were traditionally nonpartisan, with candidates sometimes running on informal or locally created party lines rather than major-party ballots.
Thomas Nyquist was elected mayor in 1987 and served four consecutive four-year terms, stepping down in 2003 after sixteen years in office, one of the longest mayoral tenures in the village's history.
In 2003, 26-year-old political activist Jason West won the mayoral election in a three-way race, taking office alongside two other candidates associated with the Green Party (Rebecca Rotzler and Julia Walsh). West gained international attention as part of the first Green Party majority elected in New York State, and later for risking criminal prosecution to marry 25 same-sex couples. He lost his reelection bid on May 1, 2007, to village trustee Terry Dungan.
Dungan did not seek reelection in 2011, announcing he would instead focus on recovering from a stroke he had suffered on Christmas Day. West returned to the race that year, running on the "Cooperative Party" ticket, and won a second non-consecutive term. West scored 381 votes in that contest.
In 2015, Tim Rogers won the mayoral race with 353 votes, defeating incumbent Jason West (204 votes), village trustee Sally Rhoads (177 votes), and Amy Cohen (137 votes) — a four-way race that drew roughly 870 total ballots. Rogers ran unopposed in 2019, receiving 364 votes, and again ran unopposed in 2023, backed by both the Democratic and Working Families parties.
Rogers vacated the mayoralty when he won election as Town Supervisor in November 2025, defeating incumbent Amanda Gotto with 75.95% of the vote. Deputy Mayor Alexandria Wojcik became acting mayor as Rogers assumed his new role and was formally appointed by the board on February 18, 2026. Wojcik had originally been elected to the village board as a trustee after running on a self-styled "D.I.Y. — Do It Yourself" party line with a $0 campaign in 2019. +Members of the board of trusteesNamePositionTook officeLeft officePolitical affiliationAlexandria WojcikMayorJanuary 1, 2026IncumbentForwardStevie SustaDeputy mayor2023IncumbentDemocratRich SuotoTrusteeJanuary 1, 2026IncumbentDemocratAllen RossTrusteeJanuary 1, 2026IncumbentDemocratJasmine TowersTrusteeMarch 4, 2026IncumbentDemocrat
Party affiliation +PartyMayorsIndependent/Local14Democratic5*Green1Forward1
Media Newspapers
The first local newspaper in New Paltz, the New Paltz Times, was founded by Charles J. Ackert, who printed its first issue on July 6, 1860. It was a weekly paper in which the Democratic Party was supported. The New Paltz Independent, a Republican newspaper, was founded in 1868. Both the Times and Independent merged in 1919, becoming the New Paltz Independent and Times that ran until 1972, when it became the Old Dutch New Paltz Independent and Times. That same year it was renamed the Old Dutch independent, and ran until it was discontinued in 1975. The New Paltz News was founded in 1935, and merged with the Wallkill paper Wallkill Valley World in 1980. The Huguenot Herald was first published in 1976 and merged in 1985 with the Highland paper, the Highland Herald. At SUNY New Paltz, a college newspaper, the New Paltz Oracle, was founded in 1938. The Huguenot Herald and New Paltz News continued to run until they were merged by the owner of Ulster Publishing as the New Paltz Times in 2001. The modern New Paltz Times, which had no continuity with the 19th-century paper of the same name, was published weekly until 2020, when it was merged into Hudson Valley One.
Culture
New Paltz hosts a number of cultural events.
Unity in Diversity Day This event, paid for through the village, town, and SUNY New Paltz, celebrated the differences among people through food, spoken word poetry, artistic endeavors and theatrical performance. The last known theme, in 2007, was derived from Dr. Seuss's story about Sneetches.
Halloween Haunted Hasbrouck Park For over a quarter of a century the Guenther family put on a free haunted house for area residents, which attracted thousands of visitors on Halloween night. After complaints about traffic and noise concerns, owners Ann and Dan Guenther announced in 2006 that they would no longer create the attraction. However, interest continued, and the attraction was relocated to Hasbrouck Park in 2007, utilizing the park's castle playground as a centerpiece. This move also increased community involvement for the event for the two years it was held there, drawing upon the local YMCA, village employees, and volunteers from the area.
Halloween parade A parade on Halloween night has been conducted through the village since the 1960s.
Haunted Huguenot Street On the nights leading up to Halloween, stories of spirits, tragedy, misfortune and the paranormal fill the 330-year-old street under the moniker of "Haunted Huguenot Street" tours.