Over the course of the century, even after the Dutch ceded the colony to Britain after the Esopus Wars, settlers and their descendants ventured out of their original communities in search of arable land in the valley. They brought the Reformed Church with them, establishing today's Old Dutch Church in Kingston in 1660 and another in what is now New Paltz in 1717. Two decades later, settlement had reached the valley of the Wallkill River and its major tributary the Shawangunk Kill below the eponymous ridge, where the towns of Shawangunk and Gardiner are today, south of New Paltz.