East Durham, ‘The Emerald Isle of the Catskills’ that time has, thankfully, forgotten

A home away from home for Irish culture in beautiful rural upstate NY

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The annual Feis and the Catskills Irish Arts Week in East Durham invoke the experiences of years past.

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As a child, my family and I ventured every summer up to East Durham, NY, for a week or so of vacation. About two hours from our home in New Jersey, East Durham was far enough to get away, but strangely we found ourselves in the midst of the most familiar - the Irish.

This summer and last summer, I went up to East Durham again after several years of not going. I remember fondly weeks during the summer spent running around as a child at the now defunct Fern Cliff House, swimming in the pool and listening to music in the pub at night.

However, with my two younger brother and I being close in age, my parents found it hard to keep us entertained for long stretches in East Durham as teenagers, and instead opted for other vacation locales like the Jersey Shore, or even Ireland, instead.

Last summer though, my mom and I packed up for just one night up in East Durham again. As a lifelong Irish dancer with Patsy McLoughlin at The McLoughlin School of Irish Dance, I had always participated in the annual Feis in East Durham. My mom and I couldn’t say no when some friends who were competing invited us to come along for the night.

Returning to East Durham after having not been in at least 12 years, one would expect to hardly recognize the town I knew so well as a child. However, East Durham remains eerily the same.

My mom and I rather enjoyed ourselves during our return to East Durham last summer with the same group of friends we used to vacation with when I was younger. Finding ourselves easily entertained at both the Feis and the craic at The Shamrock House bar and dance hall afterwards, we became hooked on East Durham all over again.

This year, we decided to go up again, but extended our stay for a full weekend instead of just a quick night like last year.

Heading down Route 145 into East Durham - fondly dubbed ‘The Emerald Isle of the Catskills’ - time feels like it slows down. This year, I took my boyfriend with me for the first time and he was immediately taken aback by the overwhelming Irish presence in the area, one that I had nearly grown immune to.

McGrath’s, The Shamrock House, The Irish Cultural Center, Guaranteed Irish - Route 145 in East Durham is like the gates to Ireland in rural New York.

In an era that is increasingly defined by constant updates and modernization, East Durham has effectively resisted such notions by remaining much of the same as when not only I was a child, but back to when my parents were younger as well.

My mom, whose parents hail from Galway and Mayo, spent many years of her childhood in East Durham as well. She fondly remembers the area being a bit of a refuge for Irish immigrants, like her parents, who wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle of their new lives in more urban areas like the Bronx. East Durham had the feeling of Ireland, a feeling of home for the immigrants.

She remembers taking her boyfriend John, a Kerryman who is now her husband and my father, to East Durham to enjoy Irish music and general craic in the summertime in the 1980s. There, they would both mingle with the community of Irish immigrants and Irish Americans in places like Gavin’s, McGrath’s and The Fern Cliff House, environments so reminiscent of Ireland.

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