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Ghosts of the Grand Hotels: Searching for History in the Catskills

There is a haunting beauty to the Catskill Mountains. For over a century, this region was America’s premier playground—a place where presidents, artists, and tycoons escaped the heat of the city to breathe the cool mountain air.

Today, if you drive through Greene County, you will see the ghosts of that golden age. Grand hotels that once hosted thousands now exist only as foundations hidden in the overgrowth. Train tracks that carried steam engines have been pulled up, leaving scars in the forest.

But history hasn’t left the mountain top. It is just hiding in the woods, waiting for you to find it.

The Art That Started It All

Before the tourists arrived, the artists did. In the early 19th century, the rugged wilderness of Kaaterskill Falls and the Hudson Valley inspired the Hudson River School, America’s first true fraternity of painters.

Led by Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand, these artists romanticized the landscape. Their paintings, along with the writings of Washington Irving (Rip Van Winkle) and James Fenimore Cooper, created a tourism boom. Suddenly, everyone wanted to see the vistas they admired in oil paintings.

The Rise and Fall of the “Cloud Splitters”

To accommodate the crowds, massive hotels rose from the cliffs. These weren’t just inns; they were self-contained cities. However, the rise of the automobile and air travel eventually killed the industry, and fire claimed the structures.

Here are the ghosts of the “Big Three” on the Mountain Top:

• The Catskill Mountain House (1824–1963): Perched on the edge of the escarpment, this Greek Revival palace offered views of five states. It stood for 140 years but was purchased by the state and intentionally burned down in January 1963 to return the area to “wild forest.”
• The Hotel Kaaterskill (1881–1924): Built by George Harding out of spite (after a disagreement with the Mountain House owners), this was the largest mountain hotel in the world with 612 rooms. It burned to the ground in a spectacular fire in September 1924.
• The Laurel House (1852–1967): Located right at the top of Kaaterskill Falls, this hotel survived longer than most. The state acquired it and burned it down in 1967. Today, if you hike near the falls, you can still find shards of china and bricks in the soil where the hotel once stood.

The Iron Horse

Getting up the mountain was an engineering nightmare. Early tourists took steamboats to Catskill and then endured a grueling four-hour stagecoach ride.

That changed with the railroads. The Ulster & Delaware Railroad (U&D) became the lifeline of the region.

• The Narrow Gauge: In 1881, the Stony Clove & Catskill Mountain Railroad built a narrow-gauge line to squeeze trains up the steep grades to Hunter and the grand hotels.
• The Golden Era: By 1913, the railroad was carrying 675,000 passengers a year.
• The End: The lines were abandoned in 1940 as cars took over.

Preserving the Past: The Mountain Top Historical Society

In Haines Falls, the Mountain Top Historical Society (MTHS) is keeping these stories alive. Their 20-acre campus is a history lesson in itself.

It was originally the site of the Lox-Hurst Hotel. Like its neighbors, the Lox-Hurst is gone (destroyed by fire in the mid-1990s). However, the society saved two other gems:

1. The Visitor Center: A renovated 19th-century laundry building that now features exhibits on the Hudson River School Art Trail.
2. The Haines Falls Station: This is the crown jewel. Built in 1913, this U&D train station was moved to the campus and restored. It is one of only two surviving stations from the branch lines (the other, in Hunter, is a private home).

Walking the Rails

You don’t just have to look at the station; you can walk the path the trains took.

The Kaaterskill Rail Trail runs for 1.5 miles along the old Ulster & Delaware right-of-way. It is a flat, easy hike that takes you deep into the history of the region.

What to look for: At the end of Laurel House Road, near the top of the falls, look for the massive stone abutments on either side of Spruce Creek.

These stones once held a trestle bridge that carried trains full of Victorian vacationers to the Laurel House. The bridge is gone, but the stones remain—silent sentinels of a time when this quiet forest was the center of the social world.