During the period after World War II, West Saugerties was a popular summer retreat for New York City police officers, firefighters and their families.

Largely of Irish descent, the policemen and firemen’s families would spend the summer in unheated open-air bungalows, while the men worked in the city.

The principal social center was the “Pinewood House”, a boarding house/bar/restaurant on West Saugerties Road operated by the Wood family.

A group of outdoorsmen who frequented the Pinewood House acquired several acres in the late 1950s, and built the clubhouse with volunteer labor, finishing in 1962.

The building served as a meeting house, dance hall and catering facility, while the grounds offered picnicking, softball, horseshoes and skeet shooting.

In February 1967, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson moved into a house in West Saugerties nicknamed Big Pink on Stoll Road.