Insider's guide to the western Catskills

The western Catskills are about a two-hour drive from New York City. Sullivan County towns like Livingston Manor, DeBruce, and Roscoe sit roughly 100 miles northwest of the city via Route 17 / I-86, and are about an hour from Hudson or Kingston.

Livingston Manor has a walkable main street with independent shops and galleries — Old Souls for outdoor gear, Homestedt for heritage goods, and Catskill Art Space for contemporary exhibitions. Main Street Farm is the café and provisions stop, Kaatskeller does wood-fired pizza and natural wine, and Sunshine Colony is the wine bar. Catskill Brewery is a few minutes away, and the Catskill Fly Fishing Center & Museum is just outside town.

The Willowemoc Creek and the Beaverkill River in Sullivan County are considered the birthplace of American dry-fly fishing, and remain the region's most storied trout water. Both run through the Livingston Manor, DeBruce, and Roscoe area — Roscoe is known as 'Trout Town USA.' The Catskill Fly Fishing Center & Museum in Livingston Manor has riverside grounds and casting ponds. Much of both streams is open to the public through New York's public fishing rights easements — a 33-foot strip along the bank — with DEC angler parking areas marked on the state's DECinfo Locator map. Anyone 16 or older needs a New York freshwater fishing licence, sold online at decals.east.licensing.app.

The DeBruce, set over the Willowemoc in DeBruce, is a James Beard-recognized tasting-menu restaurant and the area's destination meal. In Livingston Manor, Threshold serves inventive Korean cooking, Kaatskeller does wood-fired pizza and natural wine, and The Walk-In is the breakfast spot. Northern Farmhouse Pasta and The Junction are both in Roscoe, and the North Branch Inn is worth the drive. Most take reservations on Resy and book up on weekends.

This corner of Sullivan County borders the Willowemoc Wild Forest — about 15,000 acres of Forever Wild preserve with a 40-mile trail network. Frick Pond and Mongaup Pond offer gentle loop trails with swimming and paddling. Red Hill Fire Tower and Balsam Lake Mountain are classic fire-tower hikes with panoramic views, and Russell Brook Falls is an easy walk to a waterfall and swimming hole.

Hot tubs are easy to find up here. Saunas are the rarer half, and a house with both usually means someone renovated it with February in mind rather than photographing it in July. Ours is one of them — we run Evergreen Overlook in DeBruce, where both stay open through the winter, on nine private acres with a home gym and a game room downstairs. Worth knowing when you compare: barrel kits and aluminum- or fiberglass-lined tubs finished with a little wood trim are the norm in this category. Ours are neither. The tub is solid western red cedar, coopered by Forest Cooperage in British Columbia, so it is real staves rather than a shell; the sauna was built on site for us by Birdsmouth Builders, a local Catskills craftsman, with two custom picture windows, 6 by 6 and 3 by 2 feet, looking into the trees. Two questions worth putting to any listing: is the hot tub actually maintained through winter or drained after Labor Day, and is the sauna a bespoke build or a kit off a pallet?

Plenty do, though the terms vary more than the listings let on — some charge per night, some per dog, and a few cap the weight without saying so up front. Ours, Evergreen Overlook in DeBruce, is a flat $150 per stay no matter how many nights or how many dogs. The thing we would actually tell you to check, here or anywhere in the western Catskills: fenced yards barely exist in this terrain, so what matters is acreage and how far the house sits back from the road. We have nine wooded acres and a seasonal creek, which is the difference between a dog being off-leash and someone standing at the end of the driveway keeping watch.

A washed-out forecast doesn't have to end a Catskills weekend. Livingston Manor's main street is walkable and largely indoors — Catskill Art Space for contemporary exhibitions, Old Souls and Homestedt for browsing, Main Street Farm for coffee. The Catskill Fly Fishing Center & Museum in Livingston Manor and the museum at Bethel Woods are both good rainy-day stops, and Catskill Brewery and Upward Brewing have covered taprooms. The bigger variable is where you are staying. A sauna, a hot tub that runs in any weather, a wood stove, and somewhere to play will turn a washout into the reason you came rather than the thing that ruined it. That was the calculation behind our own house, Evergreen Overlook — all four, on purpose.

Closer than the usual 'two hours from New York City' figure suggests. The route to the western Catskills runs from the George Washington Bridge up the Palisades Interstate Parkway to NY-17 west — about an hour and 45 minutes from the bridge to the Livingston Manor and DeBruce area. Towns like Nyack, Nanuet, and Suffern sit 20 to 25 minutes up the Palisades from the GWB, so they are roughly an hour and 20 minutes out: a shorter drive than from Manhattan, not a longer one. Hudson and Kingston are each about an hour away.

Each season draws a different trip. Spring and summer are the fly-fishing and swimming months, with the Willowemoc and Beaverkill at their best and lakes open for paddling. Late September through October is peak foliage and the busiest stretch for lodging, so book early. Winter brings skiing and snow tubing at Holiday Mountain and Belleayre, and it is the quietest, most affordable time to visit.