which carried US 9W until the construction of the neighboring John T. Loughran Bridge. The city's West Strand neighborhood along the waterfront has been rejuvenated in recent years and many boats can be seen moored at docks here on summer weekends. Old shipbuilders' factories line the northern bank, and one of them has been converted into the Hudson River Maritime Museum. After a slight curve through swampier, less developed lowlands in the Kingston Point neighborhood, the Rondout empties into the Hudson at Rondout Lighthouse, just opposite Rhinecliff. History Colonial era The early Dutch settlers realized the value of the creek for their colonial ambitions. However, the contention that a trading post or fort was established at the mouth of the Rondout in the early part of the 17th century is thoroughly debunked in Marc B. Fried's The Early History of Kingston and Ulster County, NY, pp. 3–14 and 155–61. The first non-Native structure at this location was undoubtedly the house of settler Christoffel Davits in 1653, and a fort was built here by the colonial government in 1660. The local Native Americans likewise frequented the area. In 1652, an Englishman, Thomas Chambers, became the first to acquire a land deed from the Indians, nearby, along the Esopus Creek (which has a vast expanse of good farmland), and thus began the genesis of present-day Kingston. The Rondout's role in the area's early settlement was as a port for the settlement that was made along the Esopus Creek [The Early History of Kingston, chapter 2] Canal era Settlement did slowly progress inland, but it was not until well after American independence that the Rondout would become economically important. In the early 1820s two Philadelphia businessmen realized the immense profits that could be made if they could find a way to get the mostly unmined high-quality anthracite coal from undeveloped Northeastern Pennsylvania to the lucrative markets of New York City. Railroads had not yet been perfected, so they saw the possibility of a canal running from Honesdale, Pennsylvania, to the Hudson at what was then the village of Rondout. In 1828 they obtained a charter for their company to do this, and the Delaware and Hudson Canal was opened a few years later. Coal was transferred from canal barges to river ships at Rondout, and it became a boomtown quickly. The canal remained a prosperous operation until late in the 19th century when