How the Catskills became the long weekend summer getaway for New Yorkers

Sign up to Simon Calder’s free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calder’s Travel email Get Simon Calder’s Travel email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. My family are spending a weekend in the Catskill Mountains, a 1,000-square-mile subrange of the Appalachians just west of the Hudson River Valley, a couple of hours’ drive northwest of New York City. open image in gallery Visitors can enjoy a bird’s eye view of the Catskills from the Mohonk Mountain House via ferrata From the 1920s until the 1960s, the Catskills were synonymous with these summer resorts, particularly popular with New York City’s vacationing Jewish population – not for nothing was the area nicknamed The Borscht Belt. open image in gallery Hudson Valley’s Kingston was New York’s original state capital A little further north of Mohonk is Kingston, the original state capital. It’s run by a New York City transplant called Taavo Somer who started to come up to the Catskills and Hudson Valley in 2002 with his family and became hooked.