Welcome to the newly redesigned Guide magazine!

When I first joined the staff of the Guide nearly seven years ago, it was the only four-color monthly magazine covering both the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley. Now, there are many fine publications covering the Region, and while each publication has a different strength, I believe that the Guide remains the premier publication of the Region.

Over the years, I have heard a lot of feedback about the Guide: most of it has been positive, but I’ve heard the negative as well. In the past year, what I’ve heard most is, “I really love the Guide, but you haven’t changed in a long time.” It became obvious that we needed to catapult ourselves into the 21st century, to adapt ourselves to a changing world.

Change is a hard, if ultimately necessary, part of life. We have spent the past couple of months working on a new vision for the Guide. This new Guide will continue to offer you, our readers, the most comprehensive information about travel and tourism in the Region, but we’ve updated our look and our content to make it more topical, fresher and hopefully more engaging for our readers.

When the Catskill Mountain Foundation (map) purchased the Guide magazine seven years ago and began to transform it into a regional arts and tourism magazine, it was to complement the Foundation’s work in promoting the Region as an arts destination. We feel very strongly that the arts are an important way to improve the economic life of a region. One needs look no further than across the state border to North Adams, MA, for proof of success. When I was a young college student at Mount Holyoke, I often traveled through North Adams to visit friends at Williams College. This was the early 1990s, and North Adams at the time was nothing more than a former mining town in New England. The poverty was depressing.

Fast forward to 2007, and the arts—thanks specifically to the contemporary art museum known as MASS MoCA—have transformed North Adams to a prosperous community, filled with restaurants, shops, and most importantly, hope for a better future for a community that in the 1990s had given up hope a long time ago.

I believe that the work of the Catskill Mountain Foundation (map), along with other non-profit arts organizations in the region, will have the same results in the Catskill Region. The arts have historically driven tourism to the Catskill Mountains, and I see no reason why the arts can’t bring more people to the Region in the 21st century. In addition to organizations like Maverick Concerts, the Belleayre Music Festival, Bard College and others, which have been bringing music and the arts to the Region for a long time, there are also new venues like the Bethel Woods Center for the Performing Arts, which are bringing more arts to the Catskill Mountains. The Doctorow Center for Film and Performing Arts in Hunter, scheduled to open in August, and the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, currently under construction, will bring even more talent to the Region. And, it seems every day someone is telling me about a new gallery that is opening in Catskill, or Woodstock, or Delhi. This is an exciting time to be in the Catskill Mountains.

There is one big change in the Guide that I’d like to mention. Our printed calendar of events is shorter than in the past. Our Web site, www.catskillregionguide.com, will continue to offer a complete calendar, so be sure to visit the Web site often.

I hope that you enjoy the new Guide.

See you in the Mountains!

Yours sincerely,


Sarah Taft
Managing Editor
tafts@catskillmtn.org