Accomplishments of local colonial people; economy
Colonial Road Corridors: Opportunities for Growth
Primary roads ran up and down the Hudson River, with a secondary road branching off through Goshen and Warwick.
Milestones were placed along major roads in colonial days, to help guide travelers and to compute distances for postmasters.  Warwick still has several visible.  This one is on Oakland Avenue, and marks the distance to Newburgh.  The known Warwick markers are in a red stone that is not native to Warwick. This suggests the possibility these are among the milestones planned or inspired by Benjamin Franklin when he was Postmaster General.
Francis Baird built his tavern at an intersection of this road and another from Goshen; other tavern keepers of the colonial era were Jacobus Post (Edenville, Union Corners Rd.) and John Smith (near corner of Main St. and Colonial Ave.)

Improving Roads & the Revolution:
“The increasingly technological wars of the British, the French, and their Native American allies in the eighteenth century meant new roads had to be built and existing ones widened and improved.  Wide roads were necessary to move large bodies of regular troops, their supplies, and seige cannon.  Another force driving improvments of roads in the mid-century was the improvement of postal service after British authorities finaly established a postal service voereing all the Continental colonies in 1751…Benjamin Franklin, appointed co-deputy postmaster in 1753, was particularly active, traveling extensively through the northern colonies, inspecting post offices and suggesting new routes and procedures.  He devised a crude cyclometer that he hitched to the back of his chaise for measuring the distances along the roads and laid out, or encouraged others to lay out, milestones.  Improvement of land communication between the colonies was one force contributing to colonial unity before and during the Revolution.”
(Excerpt from Science and Technology in Colonial America by William E. Burns, p. 87)