New York Catskills

The Catskills have always been New York City’s release valve. The mountain resorts of the Borscht Belt era attracted millions of urban visitors through the mid-20th century; when the resort era faded, the landscape gradually returned: forests reclaimed farms, streams ran clearer, and the deer population recovered to extraordinary density. The wave of creative people who have been renovating old properties and opening design-conscious small accommodation here over the past 15 years has produced something genuinely new: a destination that is rural, accessible, beautiful, and strange in the specific way that happens when creative urbanites build something in the countryside.

The Catskills’ accommodation renaissance has been driven by people who moved here from Brooklyn and brought a specific sensibility about what a place to stay should be. Scribner’s Catskill Lodge, a 1960s motor lodge on the Hunter Mountain road rebuilt as a thoughtfully designed outdoor retreat, set a template that many followed. The Graham and Co in Phoenicia, with its mix of motel rooms, camping, and a communal fire pit culture, became a social destination as much as an accommodation. Woodstock farm retreats with James Beard-level breakfast programs. Creek-side cottage clusters on the Beaverkill, the birthplace of American dry-fly fishing. The accommodation here reflects a specific moment in American cultural history: cities becoming expensive, countryside becoming interesting, and the old and the new negotiating something genuinely worthwhile.

The Catskill High Peaks, 35 summits above 3,500 feet, provide serious hiking that rewards experienced walkers. Slide Mountain (4,180 feet), where John Burroughs spent summers in a cabin, is the region’s benchmark summit. The Devil’s Path, a 24-mile ridge trail over six 3,500-foot peaks, is one of the most strenuous day hikes in the Northeast. For less committed exploration, Kaaterskill Falls, a two-tiered 260-foot waterfall that inspired Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School painters, is reached by a 45-minute trail walk and has been drawing visitors since the 1820s.

The Catskills sit at the center of one of New York’s most productive agricultural regions, and the farm-to-table movement here is not a marketing strategy but a genuine supply chain. The weekly Catskill Center farmers markets, the farm stands along Routes 28 and 23, and the restaurants in Woodstock, Phoenicia, and Livingston Manor that cook from a 20-mile radius represent the Hudson Valley food culture at its most authentic. Catskill Provisions honey whiskey, Neversink Spirits apple spirits, and the wine program at the revived Brotherhood Winery are points of regional pride worth investigating.

The Catskills are the cradle of American dry-fly fishing. The Beaverkill, Willowemoc, and Delaware rivers produced the technique in the late 19th century: Theodore Gordon, the father of American fly fishing, perfected the dry fly here at the turn of the 20th century. The Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum in Livingston Manor tells the story; the rivers themselves remain among the finest trout streams in the Northeast, with the upper Delaware holding exceptional wild brown trout.

Woodstock has been an artists’ colony since the early 20th century when the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony was established on the hillside above town. The Art Students League of New York operated a summer school here for decades. The village today, with its mix of galleries, music venues, and the Tinker Street pedestrian commerce, is more livable and genuine than its reputation suggests. The Museum at Bethel Woods, built on the original site of the 1969 Woodstock festival, provides excellent documentation of the event and its era in a landscape that remains remarkably unchanged.