The Catskill Mountain House, which opened in 1824, was a famous hotel near

Palenville, New York Palenville is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in Greene County, New York, United States. The population was 1,037 at the 2010 census. Palenville is in the southwestern part of the town of Catskill, located at the junction of Routes ...

, and in the

Catskill Mountains The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas cl ...

overlooking the

Hudson River Valley The Hudson Valley (also known as the Hudson River Valley) comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York. The region stretches from the Capital District including Albany and Troy south to Yo ...

. In its prime, from the 1850s to the turn of the century, it was visited by three U.S. presidents (

U.S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General of the United States ...

, Chester A. Arthur, and

Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...

) and the power elite of the day.

History

Construction

The Mountain House's site, the "Pine Orchard," had long been famous for its panoramic views up and down the

Hudson Valley The Hudson Valley (also known as the Hudson River Valley) comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York. The region stretches from the Capital District including Albany and Troy south to ...

and even beyond to the east.

John Bartram John Bartram (March 23, 1699 – September 22, 1777) was an American botanist, horticulturist, and explorer, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for most of his career. Swedish botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus said he was the "greatest na ...

and

James Fenimore Cooper James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonist and Indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought ...

had both written about it, in different contexts. Artists and writers had discovered the Catskills some time earlier. Shortly after it was constructed, the Mountain House and its surroundings became a favorite subject for

Washington Irving Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and " The Legen ...

and artists of the new

Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area ...

, most notably

Thomas Cole Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history painti ...

. Cooper advised his European audience, "If you want to see the sights of America, go to see

Niagara Falls Niagara Falls () is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the Canada–United States border, border between the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario in Canada and the U.S. state, state ...

, Lake George and the Catskill Mountain House."

Harriet Martineau Harriet Martineau (; 12 June 1802 – 27 June 1876) was an English social theorist often seen as the first female sociologist, focusing on race relations within much of her published material.Michael R. Hill (2002''Harriet Martineau: Theoretic ...

was more moved by the view there than at Niagara.Martineau, Harriett, ''Society in America'', Vol. I, p.179 (New York, 1837) (retrieved Dec. 18, 2022).
/ref> The hotel was built in 1823 and opened a year later by a group of merchants from nearby Catskill on a plateau with sweeping views of the Hudson Valley on one side and two lakes on the other side that provided water and recreation. In 1839, Charles L. Beach, whose father ran a

stagecoach A stagecoach is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by four horses although some versions are dra ...

line from the town of Catskill to the Mountain House, leased the hotel from the owners for six years and then bought it outright. Beach rebuilt the Mountain House, changing the original Federal design into a

neo-classical structure Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing sty ...

The Fried Chicken War

One summer day in 1880, a prominent

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

businessman and longtime Mountain House guest named George Harding asked a waiter to bring some fried chicken to his daughter Emily instead of the hotel's usual dinner fare of roast beef, as she had been prescribed a diet which excluded red meat. The ensuing argument went all the way to Beach, who refused to budge despite Harding's history with the hotel. In exasperation, Beach suggested that Harding should perhaps build his own hotel. Harding called the bluff, checking his family out that very day and beginning plans for his own hotel, to be located atop neighboring South Mountain and utterly dwarf Beach's. He kept his word, opening the

Kaaterskill Hotel Kaaterskill may refer to: *Kaaterskill Clove, a deep gorge, or valley, in New York's eastern Catskill Mountains *Kaaterskill Creek, a tributary of Catskill Creek * Kaaterskill Falls (disambiguation) *Kaaterskill High Peak, one of the Catskill Mount ...

next year and offering the Mountain House its first real competition. The rivalry between the two hotels and their proprietors came to be known in the region as the "Fried Chicken War." It actually benefited both, since guests at one would often stroll to the other for lunch. The view that made the Mountain House famous came at a cost— getting up the 1,600-foot (487.6 m) climb from the valley required a five-hour stagecoach ride. As more competing hotels that were easier to reach began to be developed, the Mountain House built the cable-operated

Otis Elevating Railway The Otis Elevating Railway was a narrow gauge cable funicular railroad leading to the Catskill Mountain House in Palenville, New York. For the first 64 years of its existence, the Catskill Mountain House was accessible only by a long stagecoach ...

to bring its guests directly from the Hudson to the hote

But the railway proved to be expensive to operate, and was finally sold for scrap in 1918 during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

Decline

Beach's promotional claim that the Mountain House sat amid the highest peaks in the Catskills suffered a major blow in the 1880s, when

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...

Arnold Henry Guyot Arnold Henry Guyot ( ) (September 28, 1807February 8, 1884) was a Swiss-American geologist and geographer. Early life Guyot was born on September 28, 1807, at Boudevilliers, near Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was educated at Chaux-de-Fonds, th ...

undertook the first-ever comprehensive survey of the Catskills and found that the highest peak in the region was not

Kaaterskill High Peak Kaaterskill High Peak (officially just High Peak) is one of the Catskill Mountains, located in the Town of Hunter in Greene County, New York, United States. It was once believed to be the highest peak in the entire range, but its summit, at 3,6 ...

, which dominates the view south from higher mountains in the area, but Slide Mountain, many miles to the southwest in the

Ulster County Ulster County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. It is situated along the Hudson River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 181,851. The county seat is Kingston. The county is named after the Irish province of Ulster. History ...

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an o ...

of Shandaken. Beach, who had long claimed that the Pine Orchard was at 3,000 feet (914.4 m) above sea level, 750 feet (228.6 m) higher than its actual elevation (a fib perpetuated even today by the state historical marker at the site), joined forces with his rivals to cast doubt on Guyot's claim, and even questioned his scientific credentials. But by 1886, other surveyors had confirmed Guyot's results, and the North-South Lake area was no longer the heart of the Catskills.

Fall

Beach and Harding both died in 1902. Just as the fame of the Mountain House was to be eclipsed by other area hotels, so were the Catskills eclipsed by the

Adirondacks The Adirondack Mountains (; a-də-RÄN-dak) form a massif in northeastern New York with boundaries that correspond roughly to those of Adirondack Park. They cover about 5,000 square miles (13,000 km2). The mountains form a roughly circular d ...

as the fashionable playground of the wealthy. The Mountain House continued to operate until the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

— 1941 was its last season. In 1962, the State of New York acquired the property. Preservationists pointed to the hotel's historic value, but were ultimately unsuccessful when it was burned by the state Conservation Department on January 25, 1963, in accordance with revisionist

Forest Preserve A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or o ...

management policies forbidding most structures on land retroactively decreed by government to be "forever wild."

Today

The state now operates a large public campground, North-South Lake, near the site of the hotel. The Mountain House site is an easy walk from it along the popular

Escarpment Trail An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. The terms ''scarp'' and ''scarp face'' are often used interchangeably with ''es ...

. All that remains of what was once America's most fashionable resort are the gateposts and the sweeping views from the cleared site.

External links

Catskill Mountain House Archive
* ttp://www.catskillarchive.com/otis/ History of the Otis Elevating Railwaybr>Catskill Mountain House
* ttp://gedcomindex.com/Reference/Brookes/brookes174r.html Brookes Universal Gazetteer (1850)

References

{{Coord, 42, 11, 42, N, 74, 02, 05, W, type:landmark_region:US-NY, display=title History of New York (state) Landmarks in New York (state) Catskills Hudson River School sites Demolished hotels in New York (state) Hotel buildings completed in 1823 Hotels established in 1824 Buildings and structures in Greene County, New York