[3] Local tradition and several early historians recount legends of seventeenth-century Dutch miners searching for copper in the Minisink region and commencing mining operations at this location before 1650.

[4] This tradition has been refuted by recent research, and it is thought the road has no connection with the mines but was built as Dutch families from New York settled the Minisink in the Eighteenth Century.

[8] Another legend claims that early Dutch settlers of New Netherland in the 1650s discovered and worked the mine in Lenape territory.

This then leads to the legend that the Dutch built the Old Mine Road stretching 104 miles (167 km) to Esopus, New York to transport the ore.

The earliest documented reports are from the 1750s, when John Reading, Jr. and his partners purchased land along the Mine Brook in early Walpack Township along the Delaware River in northwestern New Jersey.

[11] Reading, a prominent surveyor and land investor and member of the Provincial Council, served as the New Jersey colony's acting governor in 1747, and from 1757–1758.

[18] The land was then purchased by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in preparation for the building of the controversial Tocks Island Dam project.