Last Resorts.(three books)(Brief Article)

The world's first milk line, the Midland Railroad, ran from New York to the Catskill foothills in 1870. According to IN THE CATSKILLS (Columbia), a collection of writings about the region edited by Phil Brown, the train was largely responsible for the influx of middleclass Jewish families into the area's dairy farms. Brown's anthology examines the area's religious and ethnic dynamics, from an "anti-Hebrew crusade" in 1889 to the emergence in the nineteen-forties of a bungalow community that became known as the Borscht Belt. A history of another favorite family destination, Lawrence Squeri's BETTER IN THE POCONOS (Penn State), also focusses on resort spots made accessible by public transportation--"gravity" railroads gave New Yorkers a chance to visit the Pennsylvania mountains and resorts with names like Paradise Stream, Vacation Valley, ...