The meals and accommodations in this beloved region of upstate New York have a welcome new elegance, even though the forests and mountains there are still as wild as ever.
The Catskill settlement doesn't seem particularly Catskill-like. Its location on the Hudson River, some miles east of the mountains that give the area its name, is partially to blame for this. But from the house of Thomas Cole, where my husband Caleb and I found ourselves recently, you can see those mountains, a lumpy ribbon of greyish lilac.
In the 1820s, the English-born Cole started depicting this region of upstate New York. He was a founding member of the group of artists known as the Hudson River School, and he is most known for his romantic depictions of the river. However, he often painted the Catskill Mountains, which he depicted as lush, uninhabited, and illuminated by an almost unearthly light.
Around the time the area began to draw tourists, Cole lived there. Many of these visitors were drawn to the recently built Catskill Mountain House, which was located in a pine forest high in what is now the Kaaterskill Wild Forest. The opulent hotel was a short distance from a cliff's edge, giving visitors not only breathtaking views of the Hudson River but also the thrill of being only a few feet away from dying in the fall. A figure sitting at the base of the cliff and sketching the hotel's white Federalist façade can be seen in one of Cole's paintings.
Caleb and I examined Cole's paint supplies and fold-up chair inside his now-museum-like home before watching a film in which an actor read messages by the artist. Cole was worried about the railroad's recent arrival and the Catskills' forests being destroyed by new industries, particularly tanning. He wrote, "I cannot help but express my grief that the beauty of such places is swiftly disappearing.
It occurred to me that Cole if he were still living today, would have to admit that the Catskills' natural beauty has been preserved in great part as a result of safeguards put in place by New York State in the early 20th century. Following our visit to the painter's home, Caleb and I entered Catskill Park, a 700,000-acre expanse of lofty peaks and opulent forests spanning four counties. A few days later, we climbed to the location of the former Catskill Mountain House and saw the same breathtaking view that enchanted visitors up until the hotel was demolished during World War II. At the cliff's edge, early visitors had carved graffiti, which Caleb captured on camera. The location was deserted and felt quiet and primeval.
We found blond wood and a rain shower at Windham, a small village at the base of a well-known Greene County ski resort, and our home for the first two nights of our week-long Catskills tour, where the travelers of the 1820s had stately splendor. The 2018-opened Eastwind Hotel & Bar is part of a surge of chic new Catskill hotels, opulent campgrounds, stores, and eateries. That trend started about ten years ago, but it has intensified as a result of the pandemic as more and more city dwellers go for wide-open spaces. (Two sets of modern cabins, Hutton Brickyards in Kingston and Piaule in Catskill, were introduced in the summer of 2021. In Bethel, the Chatwal Lodge opened in the spring of 2022.)
The most seductive aspect of Eastwind is concealed. Drive past the refurbished fishing lodge that serves as the main structure and you'll come across modern wooden glamping structures in a fairy-light-draped field. Our oblong cabin was built with the ingenuity of a Rubik's Cube: a living room led out to a terrace, while a study and utilitarian bathroom were hidden beneath a sleeping loft.
The starry sky and the distant sound of coyotes gave Caleb and me the impression that we were in the wilderness as we sat by our firepit in the evenings and consumed the free s'mores kit. The dog that strayed over from the neighbor's house next door gave us the comforting feeling of being children camping in a backyard while we munched on a breakfast basket of hard-boiled eggs, warm croissants and rolls with jam, and yogurt topped with granola in the morning.
Rural Greene County is three hours from New York City, so it doesn't draw as many weekend tourists as other Catskills regions, which gives it a quieter, more isolated atmosphere. We passed split-rail fences, stone churches, and a lone woman walking a Saint Bernard as we wound our way along the winding roads that wound into the sharply rising mountains. We spent a bright morning at Mountain Top Arboretum in Tannersville, where we strolled along winding trails through shaded spruce trees and fields of wildflowers while being serenaded by birdsong.
We made a pit break at Kaaterskill Falls, one of the most well-known sites around. Since other local waterfalls are just as good as this 260-foot-tall cascade, I felt a bit guilty about wanting to visit it. However, it was comparatively uncrowded on a weekday during low season, and from the observation platform at the top of the falls, the magnitude and force of the spectacle were enough to make us gasp.
A feast of carbohydrates seemed the most appropriate way to round off a day of trail walking. We had dinner at Prospect, a restaurant inside Scribner's Catskill Lodge, a wonderfully renovated hotel in Hunter, another ski town. The menu features local fare like smoked trout and cheeses made by farmers in the Hudson Valley. However, I decided to stick to Italian cuisine by serving a creamy, salty cacio e Pepe as my entrée and an appetizer of toast topped with whipped ricotta and drizzled with hot Calabrian honey.
I questioned whether the new hotel's maximalist design—antler chandeliers, eye-popping Western-style patterns—would conflict with my restrained sensibilities as I browsed the Urban Cowboy website. The attendees appeared to be Gen-Z and outgoing on Instagram, although I am middle-aged and reserved. But as soon as Caleb and I entered the main lodge, our worries vanished. The staff gave me a mocktail with ginger flavor as they spoke with Caleb about his love of birds and showed him potential spots to search for local species.
Within the Big Indian Wilderness Area, a sizable area of protected woodland, Urban Cowboy is located in a hollow. We went down the expansive, sloping grass to a stone creek that pools into a swimming hole after checking in. The mountains began to rise all around us, benevolently guarding us.
We felt the way the entire time we were there. A reminder that the primary goal of maximalism is to have fun was provided by the bedside sconces in our suite, which was located on the top floor of a three-story chalet. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch of vegetarian small plates on the porch of the main lodge while listening to Digable Planets and Ol' Dirty Bastard. The food included slow-roasted cabbage, beer-battered shiitake mushrooms, and the finest vegetable of all, french fries. The kind personnel, whose first names we immediately picked up, treated us like we were old friends while providing excellent service.
Having spent a large portion of his adolescence in the Adirondacks, Lyon Porter, who cofounded Urban Cowboy with his wife Jersey Banks, told me that he wanted to recreate the rustic luxury of the lodges there. He said, "I want to see the Milky Way." "I desire bears." The other visitors' expressions of complete satisfaction were the best testament to his and Banks' vision.
Porter referred to Big Indian as the "doughnut hole" of the Catskills because it is near the point where three of the four counties in the area converge. A 30-minute journey to the east took us to Woodstock. Even though the renowned concert that bears the same name took place further south in Bethel, the town's history as a hub for 1960s counterculture still draws tourists, and the shops on Main Street still have tie-dye and peace signs up from the time when Bob Dylan and Van Morrison roamed its streets.
The arrow of time, though, may pierce even the staunchest hippy holdout, and newcomers are subtly altering the landscape. Over a day, we visited Tinker Taco Lab, where we enjoyed fried avocado tacos by a bubbling stream; Rosie DeVito's perfectly salty-sweet chocolate chip cookies from her 2021-launched Overlook Bakery; Harana Market, a family-owned Asian grocery; and Silvia, where we enjoyed a thoroughly contemporary meal on the open terrace.
We ate dish after dish of delicious food there, including grilled halloumi with charred peppers and zhoug and an heirloom tomato salad with za'atar, but the bread is what I remember the most. It was served with whipped butter, a pile of olives and radishes dusted with citrus zest, and a hot, beautifully fluffy pita that seemed so delicious it could have passed for dessert.
In the southern Catskills region of Sullivan County, Lake Superior State Park, we strolled through a field one afternoon. Laura Chávez Silverman, a self-taught naturalist who founded the Outside Institute in 2017, accompanied us. One of the many recent immigrants, Silverman, opened a business out of a desire to give back to the community they had grown to love. She informed us that she left New York City in 2009 and relocated to the area because it reminded her of the woodlands in northern California, where she was raised.
She became more anxious to impart her expertise to other transplants like herself as she learned more about the Catskills' flora and animals. I believe there is a desire for people to get outside, she remarked. However, they are either unsure of where to go or, if they do venture outside, are unsure of what they are seeing.
Silverman now conducts seminars on preparing natural cosmetics and cooking using foraged ingredients, as well as nature walks with a focus on foraging. She demonstrated how hickory bark may be burned and cooked with sugar to make syrup while wearing a khaki jumpsuit, broad-brimmed hat, and a long braid in her silver hair. To show us the wasp larvae within, she sliced open a gall. She instructed us on how to recognize conifers by the pain they cause when touched: "If it hurts your hand, it's a spruce."
Aaron Hicklin, like Silverman, drew inspiration from early experiences; in his case, trips to bookstores in small-town England, where he was born. In Narrowsburg, at the point where Pennsylvania and New York State are separated by the Delaware River, he established One Grand Books. To organize the shelves, Hicklin, a former magazine editor, asked two well-known individuals—author George Saunders and singer Phoebe Bridgers—to each select 10 volumes.
He describes it as being like a "very unusual dinner party" where Laurie Anderson and Ta-Nehisi Coates are seated next to Tilda Swinton. The town of Livingston Manor received a second location of the store thanks to Hicklin.
The launch of Doug Doetsch and Susan Manning's Seminary Hill Orchard & Cidery in Callicoon is like a homecoming for the Chicagoans: Doetsch is a Callicoon family descendant, so the couple wanted to support the community. The result is a classy modern structure with stunning views of an orchard and the Delaware River Valley that was partially constructed using wood from the now-demolished Tappan Zee Bridge.
A former hospital and a doctor's office are now home to the cidery's Boarding House, which Doetsch and Manning have transformed into a charming place to unwind after an evening of cider-fueled merriment. The interiors were decorated with a straightforward Shaker aesthetic by Tom and Anna Roberts of the Livingston Manor design duo Homestead. They used a calming color scheme of greys and olives, wooden elements, natural linens, and vintage prints from a book about New York apples.
At Kenoza Hall, a former early 20th-century inn with an expansive lawn sloping down to a lake, our adventure came to an end. Caleb took one of the hotel's kayaks out in the morning to go exploring as we lounged by the water in Adirondack chairs while reading. We strolled a nature trail behind the house as twilight fell after a traditional French dinner on the patio. This startled a family of deer, who briefly eyed us with curiosity before running away. My heart began to rush at the sight.
We traveled to the DeBruce, a sister property of Kenoza Hall, which is situated on a peaceful country road outside of Livingston Manor, on our final evening. We ate the nine-course tasting menu as dusk fell on the front porch of the hotel, which also contains one of the Catskills' top restaurants, the DeBruce. Arancini packed with eel, langoustine wrapped in wild chamomile flowers, ramp, aerated cheddar, and pea purée—chef Eric Leveillee described the dinner as "a crazy excursion inside my brain."
Our server, Connor Mikita, moved with an easy elegance while wearing Converse high-tops. He started up a discussion with us and revealed that he played drums for a band by the name of the Nude Party. In 2018, Mikita and his bandmates relocated to Livingston Manor and resided in a home owned by their management. They had already spent a full four seasons there due to the pandemic's interruption of their touring schedule. Indeed, he had fallen head over heels for the Catskills.
I want to stay here and near here," he declared. "It has a particular position in history. You'll get a strong sense of connectedness to the world if you spend time here."
Create a Custom Fall The Catskills Tour
Places to Stay
The Scandinavian-inspired Eastwind Hotel & Bar is located in the ski resort town of Windham. starts doubling at $279.
Kenoza Hall is a boarding house on serene Kenoza Lake that has been tastefully refurbished. from $349 for doubles.
A chic refuge in the tranquil Big Indian Wilderness Area is Urban Cowboy. from $275 for doubles.
Where to Eat
The DeBruce: At this hotel and restaurant next to Livingston Manor, chef Eric Leveillee creates innovative meals. a $225 tasting menu.
The to-go menu at Woodstock's Harana Market features a variety of Filipino foods.
Excellent sandwiches and upscale foods are available at Main Street Farm in Livingston Manor.
Woodstock's Overlook Bakery offers delectable cakes, bars, and cookies.
Prospect: At Scribner's Catskill Lodge's restaurant, order the handmade pasta. $24–$65 for meals.
The tiny meals at Seminary Hill Orchard & Cidery, a tasting room west of Callicoon, are just as breathtaking as the vista.
Silvia: The top eatery in Woodstock emphasizes the utilization of seasonal, local produce. $30–$34 for meals.
Steps to Take
A museum dedicated to the Woodstock festival is located at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.
Laura Chávez Silverman organizes nature hikes near the institute.
The Catskill residence of the artist from the Hudson River School is the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.
Shop Homestead: This Livingston Manor retailer carries fashionable items for both indoor and outdoor use.
A cabinet of a curiosities-like antique store in Narrowsburg is called Maison Bourgogne.
One Grand Books: Renowned artists select the inventory for this Narrowsburg shop.
Under the headline, Catskills Calling, a version of this article initially appeared in the November 2021 issue of Travel + Leisure.