Let’s Celebrate the Coming Season with Beer in the Mountains!
Ok… so what’s up with the 80 degree weather in NYC right now?!?! We want Fall! We want Snow! Well – it’s always cooler to the north, so LET’S GO!
The OvR Beer Bus is your designated driver to your Oktoberfest fun!
We’re serving up the best reason to get up to the mountains and appreciate the beauty of autumn…Historic Bear Mountain Inn’s annual Oktoberfest! Featuring authentic German and German-American entertainment in the beauty of the northern Catskills in autumn. Experience live entertainment and great food surrounded by lush fall foliage… oh yea… and beer!
With more food carts and more bartenders than ever before – this event will sure be a FEST for the senses! Performing this year are the Bratwurst Boys one of the tri-state’s hottest Oktoberfest bands. They’re polka-tastic!
Join us when we celebrate the changing of the seasons. We’ll be your designated driver, so you can experience Octoberfest in a day without worrying about who’s driving home. Whether your saying goodbye to summer or anticipating the arrival of winter, one thing’s for sure… Oktober deserves some celebration!
HISTORY OF BEAR MOUNTAIN INN
Situated in Bear Mountain State Park and overlooking the shores of Hessian Lake, the historic Bear Mountain Inn is listed on the National and New York State Registers of Historic Places. As the centerpiece of a unique park system that stretches from the edge of New York City through the Hudson Valley, the Bear Mountain Inn was declared by The American Architect to be one of the “finest examples of rustic Adirondack architecture in America” upon its opening in 1915.
Park employees using natural materials constructed Bear Mountain Inn. The stone used in the foundations, wall facades and the two remarkably large fireplaces was obtained from old walls on properties acquired for Bear Mountain State Park. Chestnut timber harvested from local parklands and milled on site was used for framing, certain trim, siding and floor coverings.
The inn’s original cellar contained an electric lighting plant that was also used to furnish power for an escalator from the excursion boat landing to the plateau on which the inn stands. The ground floor included a “luncheon counter” while the second floor featured an open-air veranda where “moderately priced Table ‘d’hote” meals were sold. The main dining room offered “service equal to any metropolitan restaurant.”
In 1922-23, steam heat and enclosed windows were added to make the inn a year-round facility. The aim was in part to make it a center for winter sports.
The Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and New York Knickerbockers made the inn and adjacent athletic facilities their training headquarters in the 1930s.
Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Bear Mountain Inn played host to such notable dignitaries as Eleanor Roosevelt, Madame Chiang Kai-shek–First Lady of the Republic of China, and presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
It was also not uncommon to find the times’ most popular entertainers headlining, like Harry James or Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, and some believe that Kate Smith penned her theme song “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain” while at the inn.