Monroe is a town in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 21,387 at the 2020 census, compared to 39,912 at the 2010 census; the significant slip in census population was due to the secession of the town of Palm Tree in 2019. The town is named after President James Monroe.

The first settlers to this home were American Indians from the Leni-Lenape Indian nation. The Leni-Lenape nation consisted of three tribes: the Unulactus, the turkeys; Minsis, the wolf tribe; and the Unamis, the turtle tribe. As white settlers started to change north, the Leni-Lenape were annoyed to impinge on west, out of New York and New Jersey into Pennsylvania and highly developed into central North America, under the deal of Easton, a colonial concurrence signed in October, 1758. The British colonial dispensation of the province of Pennsylvania and the Native American tribes in the Ohio country signed this document stating they would be allies in the French and Indian War.

In the prematurely 1700s the lower Hudson Valley region was swine mapped out to be separated up under the crown. On March 25, 1707, the “Chessecocks Patent was established by Queen Anne”. The patent confirmed actions that had been previously acquired by buy directly from the Leni-Lenape nation. The patent was conclusive to seven people, six men and one woman. Cheesecocks as a precinct included everything of present-day Monroe, Woodbury, Tuxedo, and Stony Point. Many of the patentees never wise saying the estate they bought or were given. Many of the extra settlers to come in the same way as the Cheesecocks patent were Dutch and English. Both groups of settlers came from Long Island for the wealthy natural resources.

The indigenous name for the Place on the Ramapo River, surveyed by General Washington’s geographer and surveyor Robert Erskine, was Smith’s Mill, described by Erskine as being “on a rude bend of the Ramapo.” This site nevertheless contains the ruins of the grist mill built in 1741 by David Smith, the first settler (Map of Orange and Rockland Counties Area laid beside by R. Erskine 1778–1779). The Clove Road, which led from Haverstraw, home of Sir William Smith, up through Tuxedo and the rocky defile known by the Dutch word “kloof,” for Clove, was necessary to the American cause during the Revolutionary War. It was indistinctive to the British patrolling the Hudson and gave Washington his make off route from New York to his New Windsor headquarters. The Place was called Southfields prior to April 6, 1808, when it took its gift name of Monroe (Belcher, pp.   68–9).