New York State nearly built Sing Sing Prison here. When plans surfaced to relocate the prison to the west bank of the Hudson in the early 1900s, Mary Averell Harriman, recently widowed and sitting on her husband’s railroad fortune, offered a million dollars and 10,000 acres to stop it, joining forces with financiers George Perkins, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller to create a public park instead.
The Palisades Interstate Park Commission opened Bear Mountain Inn in 1915, built by park employees using stone pulled from old property walls and chestnut timber milled on-site. The American Architect called it one of the finest examples of rustic Adirondack architecture in the country. Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower have all stayed there, and the Appalachian Trail’s first section, opened in 1923, starts practically at its door. It’s been a Historic Hotels of America member since 2016.