Before there was a Catskills tourism industry, there was a painter. Thomas Cole first came up the Hudson to the Catskills in 1825, and the canvases he made of what he found there, waterfalls, cloves, storm light on the mountains, started the movement that became the Hudson River School. That movement has a hometown, and it is Catskill, the river village where Cole lived, worked and died.
The village's Main Street and its music rooms get plenty of attention. This is the other Catskill: the one you can walk, from Cole's porch across the river to the house his most famous student built on a hill facing back.
Cedar Grove: Cole's house
The Thomas Cole National Historic Site at 218 Spring Street occupies Cedar Grove, the house where Cole lived from his marriage to Maria Bartow in 1836 until his death there in February 1848. He painted *Kaaterskill Falls* and *The Voyage of Life* here. The house was designated a National Historic Site in 1999 and opened to the public in 2001 after restoration. Cole's 1846 New Studio, demolished in 1973, was reconstructed and opened in 2016.
The site holds the Main House, the Storehouse Studio, the New Studio and the Cole Center. The reason to go is the porch. The view west to the Catskill escarpment is the one Cole looked at every day, and standing there explains the paintings faster than any wall text.
In November and December 2026, the site is open Friday through Sunday from 11 AM to 4 PM. General admission is $20 for adults, and the grounds and gardens are free and open daily from dawn to dusk. A walk around the grounds at the edge of the day, when the light goes long across the mountains, costs nothing.
The Hudson River Skywalk
The Hudson River Skywalk opened in 2019 and links Cedar Grove to Olana across the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. The pedestrian walkway runs along the bridge, with overlooks above the river, and the full out-and-back route between the two historic sites runs about six miles. It is the only way to walk between the homes of the teacher and the student.
The bridge is a New York State Bridge Authority crossing. Dress for wind. Even on a mild day, the middle of the span runs several degrees colder than the riverbank, and in late fall it is the coldest mile in Greene County.
Olana: the student's hilltop
Frederic Church studied with Cole at Catskill in the 1840s and went on to become one of the most celebrated painters of the movement. Olana State Historic Site, on the Columbia County side, is the home he built on a hilltop facing west toward the mountains Cole painted. It is described as the most intact historic artist's environment in the United States: the Main House and its collections, a historic farm complex, and a 250-acre landscape Church designed himself.
The landscape is open from 8 AM to sunset. House tours run on a seasonal schedule that thins out in late fall, so book ahead through olana.org. The carriage roads are the draw even without the house. Church laid out more than five miles of them himself, and they lead from one composed view to the next, the way he built a canvas.
Olana is a state historic site, and the bridge is state infrastructure. New York state law prohibits cannabis consumption on state-owned land and in public spaces. That covers the Skywalk end to end.
The Hudson River School Art Trail
For those who want the views themselves, the Hudson River School Art Trail, a project of the Thomas Cole site, maps the places where Cole, Church and their contemporaries, including Asher B. Durand, Sanford Gifford and Jasper Cropsey, set up their easels. The trail starts at Cedar Grove and runs west into the mountains. Kaaterskill Falls, billed as the largest cascading waterfall in the state and a Cole subject from his first visit, is one of the marked sites, a short drive up Route 23A toward Tannersville.
In late fall, with the leaves down and the rock exposed, the trail sites look closer to the paintings than they do in summer. The Kaaterskill Falls trail sits on Forest Preserve land, gets icy early and runs through the Southern Zone rifle season from November 21 to December 13, 2026, so wear blaze orange and stay on the marked route.
A Catskill day
- 11 AM: Cedar Grove when the doors open, starting with the porch.
- Lunch: Main Street, a few minutes away.
- Early afternoon: the Skywalk east across the river to Olana, the grounds and the carriage roads.
- Late afternoon: back across the bridge with the sun setting over the escarpment, which is the whole point.
- Next morning: the Art Trail west toward Kaaterskill Clove.
For a car-free trip, Amtrak's Hudson station sits across the river, and Trailways stops at the Park & Ride by Thruway Exit 21.
For adults 21+
Catskill's position at the river makes it a hub for both sides of the Hudson, and licensed retail on the Greene County and Columbia County sides has grown. Find current options on the dispensary map, and verify licensed status via the OCM QR code at cannabis.ny.gov before you buy.
None of the stops above is a place for it. Historic sites are public, the Skywalk and Olana are state property, and Kaaterskill Falls is Forest Preserve. Keep purchases sealed and in the trunk, and never consume in a car. The law leaves a private residence or a rental whose host allows it. For edibles, start low, go slow. Neighboring Saugerties is the next stop down the river, and the regional calendar is on the events page.
