Why Nobody Vacations in the Catskills Anymore: The Borscht Belt

In the summer of 1966, the New Roxy Hotel in Loch Sheldrake owed its laundry $28,000 and its butcher $26,000 more, and when a New York Times reporter walked its carpeted corridors on Labor Day weekend, the only sound outside was crickets. Thirteen years earlier, Sullivan County counted 538 hotels, about 1,000 rooming houses and 50,000 bungalows. In August 2026, that same county borrowed $585 million to keep a casino alive. This video follows the Borscht Belt from the farmhouses that took in Jewish guests turned away elsewhere, through Grossinger's dining room and the comedians who worked the circuit, to the fires, debts and bankruptcies that emptied the hills. It looks at what the county historian John Conway called the three A's, at the fires that keep burning the ruins, and at what is left of the Catskills today. One of those fires, in August 2022, was seen by callers who saw a teenager running toward the woods. 0:00 The Hush at the New Roxy 1:52 The Rooms Nobody Else Would Rent 4:43 Nine Guests at Grossinger's 8:27 A Dining Room a Block Long 12:39 Bungalow Colonies and Summer Nights 13:55 The Last Good Summer 16:35 Keeping Up With the Grossingers 19:37 The Three A's 22:54 The Casino Albany Refused 25:43 The Real Hotel Why Nobody Vacations in the Catskills Anymore: The Borscht Belt Before Cancún and Las Vegas, America had other playgrounds. Hollywood honeymooned in Acapulco. The mob ran Havana's casinos. Families filled the Catskills every summer. Then, one by one, they emptied out. America's Lost Playgrounds tells the rise and fall of the resorts, hotels, casinos and vacation towns where Americans once went to have fun — at home and just across the border. Every episode is an investigation: real dates, real names, archive photos and the story behind the decline. 🏨 Legendary hotels and resorts 🎰 Casinos and mob-era playgrounds 🌴 Hollywood's Mexico and Cuba 🎢 Forgotten beach towns and amusement parks 📅 New episodes every Tuesday and Friday Subscribe if you want to know where America used to go — and why nobody goes there anymore.