In the early morning hours of Saturday, September 26, 1931, fire inexplicably broke out in the unoccupied storefront owned by Aaron Anderman on Mountaindale’s Main Street, and rapidly spread to either side. Despite a steady rain and a relatively calm wind, the stubborn flames eventually claimed sixteen buildings, totaling more than $300,000 in property damage, nearly $6.5 million in today’s dollars. The O&W Railroad station, the economic lifeblood of the community, was soon engulfed, and telephone and telegraph services were destroyed, effectively isolating the tiny hamlet. Remarkably, no one was seriously injured.

Fortunately, a small crew of men had been working late in a restaurant in town, and they heard the cry of fire from someone on the street. They roused Mountaindale fire chief Mortimer Michaels, and he was able to summon aid from several nearby fire departments before communications were lost. Soon, men and equipment from Woodridge, South Fallsburg, Hurleyville, Woodbourne, Loch Sheldrake, Liberty, Monticello and Ellenville arrived on the scene to contribute to the effort. Despite the manpower, it took nearly four hours to bring the inferno under control.

As dawn broke the following morning, the hamlet had been reduced to what the New York Times described in its September 27 edition as “a picture of destruction.”

“The Ontario & Western Railroad station and freight house, Meyer Levine’s real estate building, the Kantzer dry goods store, the Satell (sic) three-story business block, the New York Telephone Company Building and several others were burned,” the Times reported.

Additional buildings were actually destroyed intentionally, as firemen worked diligently to create a fire break in the face of a diminishing water supply. Despite the devastation, residents soon realized that the toll could have been worse.

“The mutual aid and a persistent falling rain and lack of wind all combined to save the village from complete destruction,” Manville B. Wakefield wrote in the chapter on Mountaindale in his 1970 book, “To The Mountains by Rail.”

By November, work had begun rebuilding some of the structures lost in the blaze, but others would never be replaced.

“Meyer Levine, who conducted a meat, poultry and vegetable market, has started building a brick structure considerably larger than the building he previously conducted, while Jacob Berkowitz, who conducted a hardware store, has also started work of excavating for a new building,” the Liberty Register reported on November 26, 1931.

For many townspeople the fire was not easily forgotten. There were still some around who had vivid recollections of an eerily similar, though smaller, blaze that had struck the community in October of 1912.

At that time, a little over a month after the Labor Day Weekend had signaled an informal end to a prosperous season for its many small resorts, the bustling hamlet had been visited by a devastating fire that resulted in at least $35,000 in property loss (almost $1.2 million today), and disrupted telegraph service for several hours.  

In “To The Mountains by Rail,” Wakefield writes that Mountain Dale—the name of the community typically appeared as two words for many years – actually began life, at least as far as the railroad and the post office were concerned, as Sandburgh, described in the railroad’s 1878 vacation guide as “a romantic village in the midst of trout streams and wild scenery and commanding charming views of far-reaching landscapes.” In December of 1880, the name of the hamlet’s post office was officially changed to Mountain Dale. It became Mountaindale (one word) in 1895.

In the next decade the name change was complete, as the original Sandburgh railroad station burned – some have said with the help of townspeople anxious to see a new terminal constructed – and was replaced with a more modern structure built closer to the center of the shifting business district.    

By 1900, the resorts around the tiny hamlet had begun to change, as the influx of Jewish vacationers had begun. In fact, the year before, local boardinghouse operator Paul Van Barriger had announced in the railroad’s “Summer Homes” vacation guide that he would be accepting Jewish tourists. This tiny announcement, and a larger advertisement for John Gerson’s Rock Hill Jewish Boarding House in the same publication, are the first references to Jewish resorts in the region that early in the next century would become internationally known for them.

By the time of the October, 1912 fire, Mountaindale had become one of the most popular stops on the railroad, and had become a summer refuge for thousands of vacationers, Jews and Gentiles alike. It was this thriving resort industry more than anything else that prompted the immediate rebuilding of the section of town lost in that blaze.  

Such was not the case in 1931.

While most of the hamlet’s main street was rebuilt in the wake of the ’31 fire, the Depression had begun to take its toll on the resort industry, and the O&W did not rush to replace the depot. Although the railroad announced on October 15 that plans were underway for the construction of a new, enlarged station to be built the following spring, it was never erected. An old passenger car was pressed into duty as a temporary station, with a freight car serving as the express office, until what Wakefield refers to in his book as “an abbreviated facility” was finally completed.

But the railroad would never recover, and the trains stopped running altogether in 1957. 

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian and a founder and president of The Delaware Company. Email him at jconway52@hotmail.com.