Mohonk Preserve and the Shawangunk Ridge

The Shawangunk country lies within the homeland of the Munsee-speaking Lenape, who traveled and hunted these ridges and valleys long before European settlement and whose descendants continue their communities today. The name Shawangunk itself comes from the language of the region's first peoples.

In the 1860s the Smiley family, Quaker educators, bought land on the ridge and built the Mohonk Mountain House beside a glacial lake, a rambling Victorian resort that still stands. To open the mountain to their guests they laid out miles of carefully graded carriage roads, and their long stewardship eventually gave rise to the Mohonk Preserve, established to protect the wider ridge for the public.

The ridge is built of Shawangunk conglomerate, a hard, pale quartz rock laid down hundreds of millions of years ago and later tilted and uplifted. Erosion left it standing as a long escarpment of sheer white cliffs, streaked with iron-stained overhangs and split by ledges and crevices.

Those cliffs made the Gunks a birthplace of American rock climbing, with routes first pioneered in the mid-twentieth century and now numbering in the many hundreds. The horizontal cracks and big overhangs give the climbing a character all its own, drawing climbers from across the country and beyond to test themselves on the pale stone.

The ridge is a haven for wildlife, from black bears and bobcats in the forests to peregrine falcons that nest on the cliffs, sometimes closing sections of crag during nesting season. Hawks and vultures ride the updrafts along the escarpment, and the ridge is a noted flyway during autumn migration.

The thin, acidic soils on top of the quartz support unusual plant communities, including dwarf pitch pine barrens and blueberry heath that turn crimson in fall. Cool, sheltered lakes and streams add turtles, salamanders, and a rich birdlife, making the preserve a favorite of naturalists as well as climbers.

Spring greens the forest and brings the falcons back to the cliffs, a fine time for the carriage roads before the summer heat. Summer is warm and busy, popular with climbers and hikers alike, and the ridge-top breeze offers relief on hot days.

Autumn is the showstopper, when the hardwoods and the ridge-top heath blaze red and gold and the migrating hawks stream past the cliffs. Winter turns the ridge quiet and often icy, beautiful for a bracing hike, though exposed trails and scrambles demand care and the right gear.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.