leaving their roads for the county or state to maintain. Predecessor turnpikes One of these, the Woodbourne and Ellenville Turnpike Company, connected those two communities. After being incorporated by the New York Legislature in 1830, it built and opened a turnpike from Ellenville on the Delaware and Hudson Canal west to Woodbourne in 1838, and later extended it further in that direction to Liberty. To the east of Ellenville, the Newburgh and Ellenville Plank Road Company was proposed in late 1849 to build and charge tolls on a plank road between Ellenville and Newburgh, major markets on the canal and Hudson respectively, and incorporated the following year. The company decided shortly thereafter to build on a southern route; the supporters of a northern route organized the Newburgh and Shawangunk Plank Road two weeks later. Both roads were completed in December 1851; an opening celebration for the Newburgh and Ellenville was held at Ellenville that month. The south route is now, with some modifications, part of NY 52. In 1895 the Walden and Orange Lake Railroad, later part of the Orange County Traction Company, built a trolley line along the old turnpike between Orange Lake, then the end of a suburban line from Newburgh, and Walden. It carried passengers and freight, including milk, until its demise in 1925. Other former turnpikes used by NY 52 include short lengths of the Jeffersonville and Monticello Turnpike (Jeffersonville to Briscoe Road), Ulster and Orange Branch Turnpike (Liberty to Cross Farm Road), Philipstown Turnpike (Pecksville to Ludingtonville), and Putnam and Dutchess Turnpike (Ludingtonville to the end in Carmel). By the 1890s, the entire route that would become NY 52 existed as public or turnpike roads. Public ownership After the demise of the turnpikes, the State Commission of Highways was created by the legislature in 1898 to improve and maintain state highways. In 1909, a connected network of routes was laid out by the legislature; none of the present NY 52 was included. It was also not part of the system of signed state routes numbered in 1924. By 1926, Route 39 was signed from Poughkeepsie to Patterson, using a short piece of modern NY 52 between East Fishkill and Stormville. Formal designation NY 52 was designated as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York. West of East Fishkill, NY 52 was assigned to its current routing along a previously unnumbered road