The Wildmere House

The Cliff House

S located on the summit of the Shawangunk Mountains, ten miles southwest of New Paltz, in Ulster County, New York. New Paltz, a station on the Wallkill Valley Railroad, is eighty-eight miles (about three and one-half hours) distant from New York; nine miles west of Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson, and fifteen miles southwest of Kingston. N.Y.

This lake, which is fed by springs and is very deep and clear as crystal, is held in a strikingly picturesque, rocky and well-wooded bowl, rising one hundred and fifty feet above the lake on the eastern side and sixty feet on the western, and from either edge the rocks tumble precipitously down to the Wallkill and Hudson River Valleys on the one side, and to the Rondout Valley on the other.

Minnewaska is now widely known as a summer resort:

First. For the remarkably bracing and restoring quality of its atmosphere. It being on the crown of a ridge, dew seldom falls. The drainage of each house is away from the lake and far down the mountain side, and the hills all around are covered with resinous pine forests.

Second. For the remarkably select character of the guests who frequent the place, a large portion of whom return year after year.

Third. For the wonderful and unique combination of the grand and the picturesque in its scenery.

Within a mile of the lake are these picturesque falls, above sixty feet high; and about half a mile lower down, the same stream falls over one hundred feet by a series of pretty cascades.

Awosting falls