Suffern: The Crossroads Where Washington Kept His Army

Suffern sits at Ramapo Pass, the gap in the mountains where New York meets New Jersey, and in the Revolutionary War that geography made it indispensable. An Irish immigrant named John Suffern, who had named the place New Antrim after his home in County Antrim, opened a tavern here in seventeen seventy-three. Washington ordered as many as four hundred soldiers to garrison the pass at all times, and he, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and George Clinton all used Suffern's tavern as headquarters at various points.

In August of seventeen eighty-one, the French general Rochambeau camped five thousand troops here on his way to Yorktown, and again the following September on the return march. Suffern incorporated as a village in seventeen ninety-six, and the main street was named Lafayette Avenue in honor of the French hero who passed through it on the road to American independence.