Mountain Dale, NY

Mountain Dale is a Sullivan County hamlet and CDP in the Town of Fallsburg, set in the Catskill foothills at about 1,010 feet. The place was once a farming hamlet called Sandburg; the arrival of the New York, Ontario and Western Railway and a post-office change in 1880 helped turn it into a rail-and-resort community. Farmhouses became lodging houses, and the area’s population changed as Jewish summer visitors and residents arrived around the turn of the twentieth century.

Mountain Dale’s old rail connection lives on in the O&W Rails to Trails trailhead beside the former station, now used as a visitor center. The trail runs toward Woodridge, passing Krieger Park, a waterfall, and a lake. In 1970, the Bach to Rock Festival was planned as a Woodstock-sized concert but was stopped by a court order shortly before opening. Today, the CDP’s trail, basketball courts, shops, and Catskill setting carry both its railroad past and its unusual place in music history.