Beacon is a city located in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The 2020 census placed the city total population at 13,769. Beacon is ration of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area as without difficulty as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, New York–New Jersey–Connecticut–Pennsylvania Combined Statistical Area.

Beacon was appropriately named to commemorate the historic beacon fires that blazed forth from the top of the Fishkill Mountains to lithe the Continental Army of British troop movements. Originally an industrial city along the Hudson, Beacon experienced a revival coming on in 2003 with the initiation of Dia Beacon, one of the largest highly developed art museums in the United States. Recent addition has generated debates upon development and zoning issues.

The area known as Beacon was contracted by Europeans as the villages of Matteawan and Fishkill Landing in 1709. They were in the course of the first colonial communities in the county. Beacon is located in the southwestern corner of Dutchess County in the Mid-Hudson Region, approximately 90 miles (140 km) south of Albany, and nearly 60 miles (97 km) north of New York City.

In 1683 Francis Rombout and Gulian Verplanck, merchant-fur traders from New York City, purchased the home that would inherit include the City of Beacon from the Wappinger tribe. The sale was sanctioned by James II of England in 1685 in the Rombout Patent. Rombout died in 1691, leaving his allocation to his daughter, Catheryna Brett. The Rombout Patent was partitioned in 1706, and Brett received and maintained nearly 28,000 acres along the Vis Kill.