Founded in 1803 and named for Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States, the town of Jefferson was formed almost entirely from the town of Blenheim, one of Schoharie County’s six original towns, except for a small portion taken from Harpersfield in Delaware County, and in 1819 part of Jefferson was taken to form part of the town of Summit. Although the lowlands of Schoharie Creek were settled in the early 18th century, there is no record of permanent European settlement in Jefferson until about the time of the American Revolution, when the town saw two skirmishes: in the Battle of the Narrows, militia forces overtook an Indian war party north of what is now the Scotch Valley Ski Area, where two militiamen were fatally wounded and the Tories and Indians were scattered and fled, and in the Sap Bush Hollow Massacre, 30 Indians and Tories surprised a group of settlers, killing three and taking seven prisoner. When the town was being formally organized, Colonel Stephen Judd secured the name Jefferson for the town by riding to Albany with maps showing the proposed layout before the legislature opened its session, and the act of incorporation passed. The town contains 24,930 acres, and a high ridge running north to south divides it between the watersheds of the Delaware and Mohawk Rivers; Utsyantha Lake on the southern border is the source of the west branch of the Delaware, and Woodchuck Hill east of Mount Jefferson is the apex of the watersheds of the Delaware, Susquehanna, and Hudson Rivers.