Burtonville, one of the first settlements in Montgomery County, was originally part of the Stone Heap Patent. Judah Burton settled here shortly after the Revolutionary War, building a dam and mills on the creek and calling it Burton Dam. The community was later known as Mudge Hollow before being renamed Burtonville in 1837. The Schoharie name comes from the Indian word To-Was-Sho-Hor, meaning drift wood, reflecting the river’s tendency during high water to carry and deposit trees and other objects. The valley was formed by Pleistocene glaciers and continuous water erosion and is composed primarily of sedimentary shale and limestone, with shale cliffs, escarpments, and flat horizontal spans of shale bedrock locally called dance floors. This place served as a ford for both Native Americans and European settlers, and the shallow, swift-flowing Schoharie made it an ideal settlement site because of the water power available from the creek. In 1785 Judah Burton erected the first mills just upstream, and water power was later directed through a large stone mill race, or power ditch, built with dry masonry techniques to serve several mills erected between 1790 and the early 1900s. Stone for the mills, race, and village dwellings was quarried from the creek. The first bridge across the creek was built here in 1790, and a later covered wooden bridge was destroyed by flooding in 1814, the same flood that destroyed Burton’s 1785 mill. In the late 18th century and through most of the 19th century, Burtonville was a booming community with a tannery, saw mill, grist mill, carding machine and fulling mill, nail factory, woolen factory, sash and blind factory, and the manufacture of hay forks and light wagons. The community also supported two churches, including the Methodist Church built in 1857, as well as two hotels, two stores, black smith shops, a school, and a post office. Stone mill foundations remain visible along the creek, and Burtonville today is a quiet residential hamlet where the creek is used mainly for fishing and swimming and is known for clear waters and abundant wildlife.