It has been a rewarding couple of years for Fort Delaware Museum of Colonial History in Narrowsburg, NY. For three days in the summer of 2024, the Fort played host to possibly the most renowned documentary film crew in America, Ken Burns’ Florentine Films, and was honored to be featured—albeit fleetingly—in four of the six episodes of the resulting 12-hour PBS series, The American Revolution last November. Less than a year later, on Sunday, October 18, 2026, the Fort is being honored by the Sullivan County Historical Society at the organization’s annual dinner at the Rockland House in Roscoe. Fort Delaware’s founder, the late James W. Burbank, would no doubt be proud.

Born in 1900, Burbank was not a Sullivan County native by birth, but his grandfather was English John Scott—so labeled by his neighbors to distinguish him from another man with the same name, who became known as Irish John Scott. English John Scott was one of the rugged, fearless men who made their living from the timber industry in Cochecton, and upon his retirement, spoke long and eloquently of his adventures on the river. Scott spent his retirement years in Fosterdale, and young Burbank visited often, soaking up all the legend and lore of the upper Delaware the old man could dish out.

Burbank joined the Navy in 1917, and spent 30 years in uniform, finally serving as an artist in the Navy Recruiting Bureau, having completed art classes at both Pratt Institute and Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. He was well-known enough as an artist to be listed in the Who’s Who in the Art World in 1938, by which time he was already summering in Narrowsburg, and in 1946 he was featured in a series of print ads for X-Acto Knives & Tools, which appeared in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, among other publications. The ads hinted at his interest in history in general and the upper Delaware in particular.

When Burbank retired from the Navy in 1947, he moved full-time to Narrowsburg with his wife Josephine and daughter Peggy. He became the official Sullivan County Historian in 1948 upon the death of newspaperman A.M. Scriber, who had been appointed the County’s first official Historian in 1933.  Burbank held the post until he resigned in 1954 in order to pursue his dream of building Fort Delaware.

At the height of the nationwide Davy Crockett craze created by the Walt Disney television segments turned feature film, and with other period themed parks making their appearance throughout New York’s upstate, a museum of colonial history along the Delaware River seemed like a no-brainer. It just took ingenuity, wherewithal and financing.

Burbank had spent years researching the life of men named Skinner and Thomas and Tyler and Tracy and the earliest European settlements along the river, and he was determined that a replica of that settlement, with docents dressed in period costume, would lure people to Narrowsburg and entertain and inform them.

He made meticulous drawings of what the place should look like and how it should be built, right down to the fasteners to be used. He supervised the construction and then, with a nod toward Davy Crockett, he donned a buckskin outfit and coonskin cap, and toting a replica flintlock, manned the fort as its chief docent, enlisting his daughter and a number of townspeople to help out.

Fort Delaware was not a fort in the military sense but was designed as a replica of the stockade that had been known as “the lower fort” of the Cushetunk settlement. Burbank’s interpretation included a number of concessions to the realities of entertaining families, such as a petting zoo, pony cart rides, a gift shop and a café. But he strived for accuracy in the historical portrayals and worked hard to ensure that the docents were well trained in the stories they were assigned to tell. He put his talents as an artist and model maker to good use, designing intricate displays and drawing detailed maps to help tell the story of the Upper Delaware frontier.

Burbank ran Fort Delaware until 1970, when, struggling, it was rescued by Sullivan County. By that time, the Davy Crockett craze had long since faded, American history had lost a lot of its luster for school kids, and most of the theme parks that had thrived in the 1960s—including Sullivan County’s own Cimarron City—had closed their doors long before. But Fort Delaware survived.

Operated by the non-profit history education group, The Delaware Company, since 2021, the Fort has enjoyed a resurgence, in terms of both its appearance and its visibility. And while James Burbank died in 1975, his fringed buckskin jacket remains on display, even as the docents have adopted the less glamorized costumes typically worn along the New York frontier. 

“In this year when America celebrates its colonial history with the Semiquincentennial anniversary of the signing of the nation’s Declaration of Independence, The Sullivan County Historical Society likewise pays tribute to Sullivan County’s own colonial history,” the SCHS noted in promoting its upcoming dinner. “Fort Delaware was created as a life-sized replica of the colonial stockaded forts that protected the pre-Revolutionary settlement of Cushetunk along the upper Delaware River. For seven decades, Fort Delaware has operated as a living museum, preserving the colonial way of life through demonstrations and educational programs performed by a trained staff and artisans costumed in colonial attire. The story that is told at Fort Delaware and by its directors, both past and present, has led The Sullivan County Historical Society to honor Fort Delaware as its nominee for History Preserver for the year 2026.”

Those who have visited Fort Delaware in recent years can readily attest why it is being honored again. Those who haven’t visited lately have just a few weekends to do so before the 2026 season ends on October 11.

For more information on the SCHS dinner, visit the group’s website, scnyhistory.org.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. E-mail him at jconway52@hotmail.com.