Editing Shawangunk, New York (section)

== History==
Shawangunk was first settled by Europeans during the 1680s.  The region was first designated a precinct about 1710, and became the township of Shawangunk in 1788.  The town's name comes from the Dutch transliteration of the Munsee Lenape name or phrase. The approximate Lenape pronunciation was "Sha-WAN-gunk," {{citation needed|date=January 2022}} probably meaning "in the smoky air."  The name first appears in the 1682 Indian deed to Gertrude Bruyn. It is uncertain if this was the Indians' actual proper name for their nearby village and "New Fort," destroyed by the Dutch on September 5, 1663, during the Second Esopus War, or if the name was merely a phrase invented by the Indians in connection with the Bruyn land purchase, possibly describing some temporary feature of the landscape. Suggestions as to whether the name may have referred to smoky conditions on the day of Bruyn's first tour of the land with the Indians in the 1670s, or to the smoky ruins of the destroyed Indian village during the preceding decade, are purely speculative.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} Use of the name to designate the creek on which Bruyn settled (Shawangunk Kill), and the mountain range, came somewhat later. Locals pronounce the name "SHONG-gum,"{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} an obvious{{according to whom|date=January 2022}} corruption or contraction of the original name, but one on record at least as far back as 1777 (Marc B. Fried, "Shawangunk Place-names" pp. ix-xi, 3-12, 96-97). Present-day citizens of Shawangunk often refer to themselves as living in particular hamlets such as Wallkill or Walker Valley rather than the town as a whole;{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} this is due to the fact{{according to whom|date=January 2022}} that many residents of the western part of the town are in the school district of Pine Bush (nearby across the county line) and have Pine Bush mailing addresses, also doing much of their shopping in that Orange County hamlet.