This goes back to the years before the Revolution, to 1753, when early naturalist John Bartram visited the area with his son to collect samples of balsam fir, which was sought for its alleged medicinal properties.

In the early years of the 19th century, American artists seeking a subject matter unique to the new nation were drawn away from New York City and up the Hudson Valley.

He made it into a premiere attraction for the country's elite, a sort of Hamptons of its day where politicians (including some presidents), captains of industry, artists, poets and writers would rub shoulders, admire the view, take walks in the adjacent forests by day and excellent dinners by night.

The popularity of the resorts led to the construction of narrow-gauge rail spurs and an incline railway up the escarpment to more efficiently bring guests to their destinations.

The area's reputation suffered a major blow in the early 1880s when Arnold Henry Guyot, an occasional visitor, undertook to do in his spare time the first complete survey of the Catskills and found that, contrary to the claims of Beach and other hoteliers in the area, the highest mountain was not nearby Kaaterskill High Peak, which dominates the view south over the lakes, but Slide Mountain, some distance to the southwest in the Ulster County town of Shandaken.

They at first disputed this claim vigorously and even tried to cast aspersions on Guyot's reputation, but by 1886 his results had been confirmed by others and the North-South lake region had lost some of its cachet.

Eventually, the state was able to acquire all the land save that around the original Mountain House, which finally closed for good after a failed attempt to revive and relaunch it in 1940.

While preservationists fought to save the remains of the Mountain House throughout the 1950s for their historical value, the policies under which Forest Preserve land was managed required the state to remove most structures on it, and they were becoming an attractive nuisance as well.

The most common activity is the same as it was in the days of the Mountain House ... hiking via the many trails to nearby points of interest such as the ruins of the Kaaterskill and the Mountain House, Kaaterskill Falls, Mary's Glen and its smaller waterfall, and the many views of the Hudson Valley along the Escarpment Trail.