Announcing the Catskills’ Newest “Museum”!
The Hudson River School Art Trail Interpretive Center
The Mountain Top Historical Society

Haines Falls, Greene County, NY:  The Mountain Top Historical Society (MTHS) is pleased to announce the creation of the Hudson River School Art Trail Interpretive Center.  On Saturday, August 26th, in conjunction with the Society’s Annual Open House, the Art Trail Interpretive Center will officially open its doors as the anchor of the MTHS campus at the top of Kaaterskill Clove on the scenic Rip Van Winkle Trail (Route 23A).

A full day of activities includes an exhibition of the work of regional fine photographers, craft vendors on the main lawn, music, dancing, food and hayrides all day. We will have Herb Schmidt’s Old Time Jazz Band for the afternoon under the eaves of the historic Ulster & Delaware train station on the property, the launch of the 20th Anniversary Edition of the classic The Traveler’s Guide to the Hudson River Valley by Tim Mulligan, as well as a special performance for the whole family by the famed Puppet People.  Rip Van Winkle will be wandering around the grounds meeting the visitors. Of course, the event is free and open to the public.

About the Hudson River School Art Trail:   The Hudson River School Art Trail is the brainchild of Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. The Trail is a self-guided tour of the present-day sites that inspired the great 18th-century paintings by Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Church and others of the Hudson River School of landscape painting.  In cooperation with its Art Trail partners—Olana State Historic Site and the National Park Service—Cedar Grove has created a tour that takes participants to the actual sites that inspired America’s first great landscape artists. The Art Trail brochure reproduces in full color some of the magnificent paintings they created, and provides a map leading to the views they depicted.

About the Hudson River School Art Trail Interpretive Center:  Nestled at the gateway to the mountaintop and at the very crest of Kaaterskill Clove, the new Art Trail Center will present interpretive panels of the great artists and their works, and will include reproductions of historical paintings by Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Church, Sanford Gifford and others, contrasted with contemporary color photographs of those same views today together with historical and modern interpretation.

Kaaterskill Clove and its scenic surrounds enchanted legions of nineteenth-century painters and helped launch America’s first indigenous school of art—The Hudson River School. It was the Hudson River School artists who made these landscapes accessible to the entire nation and, in so doing, helped to establish in the early nineteenth century a national identity for the new nation. The Hudson River School artists, their works, and even the landscapes they depicted remain, however, largely obscure to today’s general public. The establishment of the Catskill Park, the State Forest Preserve, and other conservation and preservation measures has largely reversed the ill effects that the Industrial Revolution had on the Catskill Mountain region, and vast swaths of the Catskills have reverted back to the pristine wilderness that the Hudson River School artists celebrated in their works.

About the Book:  THE TRAVELER’S GUIDE TO THE HUDSON RIVER VALLEY
From Saratoga Springs to New York City
20th Anniversary Edition
by Tim Mulligan
paper, 6 x 9, 288 pages, illustrations & maps
isbn, 1-883789-49-4, $17.95
A newly updated and revised edition of the classic and definitive guide to the best of the Hudson River Valley.

“THE BEST GUIDEBOOK TO THE REGION” (The New York Times).

“ELOQUENT, AMUSING, AND SENSIBLE” (The Washington Post).

 Over the last 20 years this has been the most trusted guide to exploring the Hudson River Valley’s myriad attractions from the festive spa city of Saratoga Springs all the way to the tip of Manhattan, noting every worthy point of interest along the way and providing everything the visitor—and resident—needs to know to enjoy this newly designated National Heritage Area that has been called “America’s Rhine.”
Visit presidential homes • great estates built by founding fathers and 19th-century tycoons • a remarkable assortment of art museums with Old Master paintings and contemporary masterpieces • the battlements of West Point and the site of the most important struggle of the Revolution • the homes, studios and painting sites of artists who made the Hudson River Valley “the landscape that defined America” • performing arts centers • the oldest and most famous horse-racing track in the country • wineries • lighthouses • arboretums • hot-air ballooning, river tubing, and bird watching for bald eagles • historic districts • antiquarian bookstores, antiques and auctions • gourmet restaurants and one-of-a-kind inns • plus walking and driving tours of all the river cities and counties with their exquisite scenery, charming old villages, vineyards and mountains, and the most spectacular view in the Northeast. 

So mark your calendars and don’t miss a special Catskill Mountain event on Saturday, August 26 from 11-5 at the Mountain Top Historical Society Campus on Route 23A, Haines Falls, NY.  For info call 800-513-9013.