Historically, the Town of Warwick was a closely knit collection of of villages and hamlets legally bound together by an act of the 1788 State Legislature. The 107 square mile area (including the villages) is the largest town in Orange County and one of the largest in the Hudson Valley. Its landscape is characterized by diversity, ranging from mountains in the east to the flat, black dirt farmland in the west. Many of the older communities remain separated by undeveloped open space or farmland, creating the typical rhythm of a rural landscape.
Warwick’s growth is part of a regional pattern. Today, employment centers in New Jersey, Westchester County, and Orange County are developing closer to Warwick and the New York Metropolitan housing market is expanding farther and farther. Warwick has become attractive for housing development. Since much of the current zone for Warwick was based on higher growth projections from the 1960s and 1970s, a new master plan was created.