Mount Beacon Fire Tower Hike
Mount Beacon Fire Tower in Beacon offers a four-mile hike past 1927 casino ruins to a 1930s fire tower with views of Manhattan, Catskills, and bridges.
Mount Beacon is the highest peak in the Hudson Highlands, and the Casino Trail up it follows the roadbed of the old incline railway, which opened on Memorial Day 1902 as the steepest funicular in the world: a 74-percent grade hauling sightseers up from the river to a casino and hotel at the top. The casino burned in 1927, was rebuilt, never recovered from the Depression, and the railway shut down for good in 1978; a 1983 fire finished off most of what vandals hadn't already torn apart. The ruins that are left now sit on the National Register of Historic Places, a broad concrete platform overlooking Beacon, half-swallowed by trees.
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