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 THE STORY 
 OF MOHON K 
 
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THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
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THE STORY 
 OF MOHONK 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK E. PARTINGTON 
 
 NINETEEN HUNDRED ELEVEN 
 
F/Z7 
 
 Copyright, 1911 
 lY MoHONK Salesrooms 
 
 THE MORRILL PRESS. FULTON. N. Y. 
 
 tCI.A3i9646 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ^ I^HE oft-repeated inquiry as to the 
 -^ history of Mohonk led the pub- 
 lishers of this book to believe that a 
 brief sketch of its founding and growth 
 would be gladly welcomed and cher- 
 ished by many who have expressed 
 their love for the place by making it 
 their summer home for many seasons. 
 
 We sincerely trust that the book will 
 fully gratify those who have expressed 
 their desire for such a work, and wish 
 to assure them that it is in every re- 
 spect a token of good will and affection 
 to all who care for, or are interested 
 in the story of Mohonk. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Mr. Albert K. Smiley Frontispiece 
 
 The Old Bridge and Mr. Stokes ... 2 
 
 Early Mohonk 2 
 
 Boating in the Old Days 6 
 
 The First House, i868 8 
 
 Mohonk House as first seen by 
 
 Mr. Smiley, 1869 8 
 
 Mohonk House, 191 1 12 
 
 Office Building about 1882 14 
 
 •The "Old Boys" 16 
 
 Washington Profile 20 
 
 The Trapps 20 
 
 View from Eagle Cliff 24 
 
 Sky Top Road 24 
 
 •The Flower Gardens 26 
 
 The Great Crevice 30 
 
 Undercliff Road 3° 
 
 ^Testimonial Gateway 3^ 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 ONE day in the early summer of 
 1869, Alfred H. Smiley, who was 
 then living near Poughkeepsie, pro- 
 posed to spend the day at one of two 
 places — either going by steamer down 
 to West Point or going by carriage to 
 a romantic lake, which, he had heard, 
 lay hidden in the mountains west of 
 the Wallkill Valley. What finally led 
 him to the choice of the unknown 
 lake is not clear, but it is interesting 
 to speculate what the future of Lake 
 Mohonk might have been had Mr. 
 Smiley that morning chosen to go to 
 West Point. 
 
 The road from the Hudson to New 
 Paltz differed little at that time from 
 the present — but from New Paltz to 
 Mohonk no road of any consequence 
 existed. Local picnic parties strug- 
 
2 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 gled up both sides of the mountains 
 over paths that had gradually devel- 
 oped, doubtless, from ancient Indian 
 trails. Approaching the place from the 
 Wallkill Valley side this rude path 
 followed along the eastern shore of the 
 lake. It was under such conditions 
 that Alfred Smiley paid his first visit 
 to Lake Mohonk. He used to tell of 
 his speechless wonder as he caught 
 the first vision of these imprisoned 
 waters; how weary and panting he 
 struggled up that steep rocky path 
 that brought him under the beetling 
 heights of Sky Top; and how suddenly 
 he saw through the dark pines the 
 glittering water — and beyond it the 
 wonderful cliffs rising from the western 
 side of the lake. It had for him all the 
 sensation of a discovery. It was as if 
 now for the first time this lake had 
 been looked upon by a white man. 
 
THE OLD BRIDGE AND MR. STOKE 
 
 EARLY MOHONK 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 3 
 
 There was scarcely a sign of life. The 
 shores were traversed by only a rough 
 path; and the extraordinary fissures, 
 caverns and rock formations that now 
 afford so much delight, were most of 
 them inaccessible — their existence not 
 even suspected. As he saw it then, it 
 could not have differed essentially from 
 what it had been to the Indians. When 
 the white men first appeared in this 
 region — as early as 1614 — the lake 
 already had its name,. Mohonk — the 
 Lake of the Sky. The valleys were 
 peopled by Indians, Iroquois and Al- 
 gonquins and other tribes, fighting fre- 
 quently and frequently moving, and 
 all of them, doubtless, when hard 
 pressed, retreating to the labyrinths of 
 the Shawangunk (pronounced Shon- 
 gum) mountains. There could be no 
 more baffiing maze for the pursuing 
 enemy than what existed then and 
 
4 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 exists now In these mountains; and Mr. 
 Smiley has frequently expressed the 
 opinion that he could still hide in the 
 vicinity of the lake so that he could 
 not be found by anybody. 
 
 At the time of this first visit of Mr. 
 Smiley, the lake and adjacent property 
 were owned by Mr. John F. Stokes, a 
 farmer in the valley, an excellent man, 
 who had already built a small rude 
 structure where he could entertain 
 picnic parties and, for those who were 
 courageous, could offer lodging. Mr. 
 Smiley has described it graphically : 
 
 *' There was a little house here in 
 which a man kept a barroom, right 
 under the corner of the present parlor. 
 One room was for dancing, and people 
 came up from the valley and danced all 
 night, for which he charged them one 
 dollar a couple. This man, and an 
 old lady and an Irish boy, ran the 
 establishment. He sold liquor also 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 5 
 
 though he tried to keep folks from drink- 
 ing too much. When people, however, 
 really got drunk and hard to manage, 
 Mr. Stokes used to chain them to trees 
 and in that way maintained order. 
 Over the large dancing-room were ten 
 bedrooms, each seven feet long by five 
 feet wide. Each bed was a bunk a foot 
 and a half wide with a straw mattress, 
 one sheet, one quilt and a hen-feather 
 pillow, and each room had one chair. 
 If any one wanted to wash, the lake 
 was handy. When a visitor demanded 
 dinner, the Irish boy would catch a 
 chicken, kill it in front of the house, 
 and pass It over to the woman to cook. 
 On one occasion — when there were no 
 chickens to catch — they caught the pet 
 peacock and the old woman prepared 
 it for the guest. This showed the good 
 nature of Mr. Stokes. He thought a 
 great deal of the peacock but the guest 
 had to have some dinner — though the 
 visitor confessed It was the toughest 
 morsel he ever tackled." 
 
6 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 To the owner of that mountain hut 
 in 1869, Mohonk was doubtless but a 
 lake, and Sky Top no more than a cliff. 
 To the man who had just climbed the 
 mountain and stood enraptured on the 
 other side of the lake, It was a prospect 
 for which he could imagine no bounds. 
 He saw In that quick sweep of his eye 
 the whole future of the place unfolding 
 and forming. He could scarcely be- 
 lieve that business sagacity had thus 
 far missed a chance like this. He was 
 standing less than a hundred miles 
 from the metropolis of the country; 
 he was surrounded by romantic natu- 
 ral features absolutely unknown to the 
 great outside world — and so unique In 
 character that they could be brought 
 into no comparison with any other 
 known region of the eastern states. 
 
 He was ferried across the lake; 
 roamed enthusiastically from point to 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 7 
 
 point; and could scarcely wait in pa- 
 tience till he should send word to his 
 twin brother Albert. It is a pity that 
 the letter he wrote has not been pre- 
 served. It reached his brother, who 
 was then at the head of the well-known 
 and successful Friends' School of Provi- 
 dence, R. I., at a time of year when the 
 activities of the school were at their 
 height and when no thought of any- 
 thing else could be entertained. But 
 here was a message from his brother — 
 a wise, conservative man of great busi- 
 ness sense — asking him to leave every- 
 thing and to come to an obscure lake 
 in New York state. He had a prompt 
 reply ready. He sent word that it 
 would be impossible. To a second 
 appeal, however, Mr. Albert Smiley, 
 though still protesting, came on from 
 Providence, and together the twin 
 brothers visited the lake. The owner, 
 
8 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 Mr. Stokes, was there to meet them, 
 and on that day they cHmbed to Sky 
 Top. Mr. Albert Smiley relates that 
 "Mr. Stokes did not appreciate some 
 features of natural beauty. 'I suppose,' 
 said he, 'that the Creator made every- 
 thing for some use; but what in the 
 world He ever made this pizen laurel 
 for I can't see. It never grows big 
 enough for firewood and the cattle 
 won't eat it.' " The old man talked 
 only of firewood, fodder, and area. 
 He believed he had three hundred acres 
 to dispose of — he had a map to prove 
 it; but as the three men walked up to 
 Sky Top and the view began to widen, 
 it was evident that it was not a ques- 
 tion of map or of acres with the two 
 schoolmasters. They passed above the 
 huge boulders that lie like a great 
 chaos, and from the labyrinth they saw 
 the lake with its indescribable color 
 
THE FIRST HOUSE, i 
 
 MOHONK HOUSE AS FIRST SEEN BY MR. SMILEY, 1869 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 9 
 
 far below; they watched the gradual 
 unfolding of the two fertile valleys and 
 the Catskill range against the western 
 sky, and finally at the summit, saw the 
 white waters of the Hudson at West 
 Point, and the far away hills of at 
 least five adjacent states. They looked 
 down as upon a kingdom. Both men 
 were greatly impressed, and talking it 
 over together agreed, as they generally 
 did upon all questions, that before 
 they parted that day from Mr. Stokes, 
 an option on the property should 
 be secured by the brother Albert. 
 The price demanded for it was 
 forty thousand dollars. The price paid 
 was twenty-eight thousand dollars. 
 "I spent every dollar I had," said Mr. 
 Smiley, "and ran in debt fourteen 
 thousand dollars. My sole purpose 
 was to provide a home and in order to 
 pay for it I started in a business for 
 
10 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 which, above all things in the world, 
 I had a distaste and no experience. 
 I suppose that hotel keeping was the 
 very last thing in my mind until I 
 bought this place, when I was about 
 forty-five years old. I had no more 
 thought of it than of going to the 
 moon. I had graduated from Haver- 
 ford and was a teacher both by training 
 and by taste. I had been nine years 
 at the head of the Friends' School in 
 Providence when I bought Mohonk; 
 I remained at the head of it ten years 
 longer in order to earn money for my 
 new venture." 
 
 Mr. Albert Smiley therefore found 
 himself suddenly in the hotel business. 
 In the summer of 1870, the original 
 house, erected by Mr. Stokes, was a 
 trifle remodeled and made to accommo- 
 date about forty guests. They were 
 nearly all personal friends from Phila- 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK ii 
 
 delphia and from New York. Still 
 averse to the details of hotel work, Mr. 
 Smiley employed a manager, who man- 
 aged things so badly that the next year 
 he persuaded his brother Alfred to su- 
 perintend the business features, and 
 began an organized policy which has 
 ever since marked the growth and suc- 
 cess of Lake Mohonk. 
 
 There is a story prevalent to the 
 effect that the original owner was a 
 Quaker who refused to let the property 
 go unless a compact was made never 
 to sell liquor in the hotel. On the con- 
 trary, Mr. Stokes had always sold 
 liquor and tried to persuade Mr. 
 Smiley to keep on selling it — at least 
 to the neighbors! And he had other 
 serious ambitions; for he urged the 
 new owners to establish a race-course 
 near what is now known as the Home 
 Farm; and he evidently was convinced 
 
12 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 that with liquor for the neighbors and 
 guests, and a race- course for amuse- 
 ment and for a source of income, the 
 venture would prove a great success. 
 The opinion of the old tavern keeper 
 was probably shared by all other hotel 
 men and most of the public. It seemed 
 preposterous to conduct a house with- 
 out a bar; and still more preposterous 
 to exclude cards and dancing. But 
 Mohonk had no difficulty in meeting 
 the awful prophecies of failure. The 
 hotel was full in its first season and 
 has been full ever since. 
 
 The original purchase called for three 
 hundred acres. As a matter of fact 
 there were only two hundred and eighty 
 acres. Besides the lake it included 
 what is now the tennis-courts, a narrow 
 strip along Eagle Cliff, a little of the 
 Home Farm and Sky Top, and ended in 
 the garden where the hotbeds now are. 
 
THE STORY OF M H O N K 13 
 
 This first purchase, however, was 
 but the beginning. It became almost 
 immediately manifest that no amount of 
 moral force could preserve the character 
 of Mohonk and keep away nuisances. 
 The history of nearly every great 
 estate is a record of self protection. 
 In the first place, neighbors in the 
 country do not always share your re- 
 spect for natural scenery and natural 
 objects. If wood is needed, they cut 
 down the trees, even along the roadside 
 — the best and the biggest; if large 
 berry crops are wanted, they do not 
 hesitate to set fire to acres and acres 
 and imperil a whole county; if they 
 need building stone — they blow up a 
 historic precipice; if they seek drainage 
 they foolishly pollute a mountain 
 stream. To protect Mohonk from all 
 these dangers, Mr. Smiley began a 
 series of purchases. He was surrounded 
 
14 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 by farms, and one after another they 
 were added to his holdings. "The 
 hardest work I ever did in my Hfe," 
 said Mr. Smiley, "was the buying of 
 those farms." No sooner was a menace 
 disposed of in one direction than an- 
 other one appeared somewhere else. 
 It was a perennial contest. Farms 
 good, bad and indifferent had to be 
 gathered in. Some were promptly de- 
 veloped for dairy purposes — and still 
 contribute to the supplies of the house. 
 Some continued to be used for crops 
 and for the support of cattle and horses. 
 For several years some of them yielded 
 abundant quantities of fruit. It has 
 taken over one hundred distinct pur- 
 chases to establish the present state of 
 immunity. From a plot of two hun- 
 dred and eighty acres, the estate has 
 been extended to a domain of over five 
 thousand acres. From a span of a few 
 
OFFICE BUILDING ABOUT 1882 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 15 
 
 hundred feet along the lake it has been 
 increased to a length of about eight 
 miles, and approaches New Paltz to 
 within a mile. This is sufficient to 
 show the growth in mere acreage and 
 to aiford a startling contrast to that 
 first but most important purchase 
 made in the summer of '69. 
 
 But the growth in territory, while 
 interesting enough, is after all the least 
 important phase of the development 
 of Mohonk. The land so acquired 
 meant something else ; it meant that the 
 hotel was growing and it meant espe- 
 cially that tremendous energy had to 
 be turned to the development and to 
 the beautifying of that land. The old 
 Stokes House that stood near the lake, 
 as already intimated, underwent im- 
 mediate changes. To this was added 
 the old dining-room wing. Back of 
 this and on a level with the cliffs 
 
i6 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 the small parlor building was erected 
 and became one of the memorable 
 features of early Mohonk. "The Lit- 
 tle Parlor," with its expressive, cosy 
 chairs and its genteel habituees, grew, 
 to some of those interesting little ladies, 
 almost sacred. While this section was 
 still standing, the old original office 
 wing was demolished and the first en- 
 largement of the business part of the 
 house was made in 1880. Subsequently 
 the large parlor section was erected. 
 Beyond this, in 1879, the present Rock 
 Building rose. In 1892-93 the present 
 dining-room and the new kitchen were 
 added. The old dining-hall was divided 
 into temporary rooms and this wing 
 preserved till 1902 when it was torn 
 down and the central section extending 
 from the office to the new dining-room 
 erected. In 1899 the large office build- 
 ing, containing small rooms above and 
 

 o u 
 
 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 17 
 
 the old Lake Reading-room, was demol- 
 ished and the present structure with 
 the great parlor took its place. And 
 finally, as the last process in the evolu- 
 tion of the House as it now stands, in 
 1901-02, the lofty stone section sup- 
 planted the old parlor wing. At each 
 stage there disappeared some feature 
 of old Mohonk, grown to be cherished 
 by the guests, and it was perplexing at 
 times to decide whether to be guided 
 by sentiment or necessity. The oldest 
 part of the present hotel is the Rock 
 Building erected in 1879 — and every 
 vestige of the other sections standing 
 at that time has disappeared. 
 
 Meanwhile the development of the 
 grounds went on with great rapidity. 
 Wild nature came up to the very doors 
 of the hotel and rough paths or trails 
 had been broken only to prominent 
 points. Not infrequently guests lost 
 
i8 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 their way on the long tramps, and on 
 one occasion a lady despairing of ever 
 getting home became hysterical and 
 set up heart-rending shrieks till help 
 came. She was found standing less 
 than two hundred feet from the house. 
 To make accessible the beauty and 
 romance of the mountain, the system- 
 atic construction of paths was begun. 
 Through labyrinth and forest, over 
 ravines and under precipices, through 
 fissure and cavern and solemn vales, 
 year after year the trails were made 
 and the trails then widened into walks, 
 till one could well nigh spend a summer 
 in tramping without the repetition of 
 a path; and it is one of the pleasantest 
 memories of those earlier days to recall 
 the forenoon tours led by Mr. Smiley 
 himself, when scores of guests both 
 young and old went forth with Alpine 
 stocks to explore the mysteries of the 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 19 
 
 Shawangunk range. Gradually along 
 these paths sprang up the rustic seats 
 with straw-thatched roofs, peculiar to 
 Mohonk ; and as time went on the 
 names of distinguished visitors were 
 given to these picturesque houses, of 
 which at present there must be no less 
 than one hundred and fifty. 
 
 For years the only drive, and that a 
 rough one, was what was known as 
 Whitney Road, leading over to Moun- 
 tain Rest. Later came a beautiful 
 road called Woodland Drive, circling 
 about the base of Eagle Cliff through 
 the chestnut forest. In quick succes- 
 sion roads were built to Cope's Look- 
 out, North Lookout, Eagle Cliff and 
 Sky Top, involving at some points the 
 highest engineering skill. Bonticou 
 Drive came in 1895; the long winding 
 forest road — Oakwood Drive — followed 
 in 1898; the bold and romantic Laurel 
 
20 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 Ledge Road in 1900; Undercliff and 
 Terrace Drive in 1903; the great road 
 to Minnewaska in 1907; all of these 
 drives presenting model examples of 
 road making under surprising difficul- 
 ties, surprisingly overcome. 
 
 The demolition of the old stables in 
 1888, marked the real beginning of the 
 extensive gardens. The land thus lib- 
 erated grew rapidly larger, and, as al- 
 ready mentioned, no one who has not 
 seen the untamable jungle beyond this 
 point could appreciate the combined 
 enthusiasm and energy required to 
 transform all that into the blossoming 
 acres that now stretch almost to the 
 crest of the mountain. What that gar- 
 den yields in variety and color, what 
 it succeeds in producing against appar- 
 ently natural obstacles, is a story by 
 itself. There are six thousand rose 
 bushes of the choicest kinds, five thou- 
 
WASHINGTON P R O 1 I L E 
 
 THE TRAPPS 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 21 
 
 sand paeonies, four thousand phlox, 
 eight thousand bedding plants, and 
 one of the largest collections of her- 
 baceous perennials and shrubs in the 
 country. 
 
 No words can convey any concep- 
 tion of the difficulties that confronted 
 the new owner of Mohonk when he 
 really began to exploit the mountains 
 for roads and flower beds. Gardening 
 with Mr. Smiley was dangerously near 
 a passion. As nature had arranged 
 things at Mohonk there seemed to be 
 only two places for growing flowers — 
 on the quartz rocks and on the branches 
 of trees. A remote third might have 
 been on the lake — a floating garden. 
 There was not a square of a hundred 
 feet where anything but ferns and li- 
 chens could hold on — and it had taken 
 some of the lichens a hundred years or 
 more to cover a few inches. The old 
 
22 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 guests with records of thirty summers 
 are the only ones who can really appre- 
 ciate the miracle of the gardens. They 
 can look back to the time when Mr. 
 Smiley used to point with pride to a 
 bed of geraniums on the side of the 
 road close to the water and to a delicate 
 white birch tree that looked like a frail 
 child — not long for this world. He 
 succeeded in stringing those geraniums 
 along the road as it swings over the 
 bridge and to the south, and every bud 
 cost him, probably, five dollars. Any- 
 body caught plucking one would doubt- 
 lessly have paid ten or have been sent 
 away. He classed that sin with drink. 
 Gradually these ganglia of flowers be- 
 gan to grow. Larger beds were made — 
 soil was brought long distances and all 
 around the exterior of the house plants 
 were made to flourish in especially 
 fortified enclosures and in soil that 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 23 
 
 practically had to be renewed to the 
 last particle every year. Finally when 
 the old stables near the bowling-alleys 
 were removed in 1888 the present gar- 
 den, as already noted, began its remark- 
 able expansion. Beyond the stables 
 lay a wilderness of boulders and cliffs. 
 To civilize this was literally asking 
 Faith to remove mountains. It was 
 done partly, perhaps, to provide space 
 for flowers. It was more likely that 
 the impossible nature of the task acted 
 as a challenge. It is always so with 
 intrepid engineers — pole seekers — be- 
 siegers. Getting the land may have 
 been the hardest thing Mr. Smiley ever 
 did — but taming it gave him the great- 
 est delight of his life. He did not rest 
 until he had coaxed into blossom nearly 
 twenty acres of that hopeless slope of 
 the mountain. Most of the earth was 
 brought a mile or more — and the won- 
 
24 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 der is, still, how it is ever kept in place. 
 To this garden Mr. Smiley has given no 
 end of time and intelligent care, and his 
 reward has been, as he himself says, 
 "a. long life and abounding health." 
 
 Unique as the physical history of 
 Mohonk has been, it is doubtless the 
 spirit of the place that ultimately dis- 
 tinguishes it from all others. Its well 
 known silent code relating to the com- 
 mon nuisances of liquor, dancing, card 
 playing and Sabbath breaking gave it 
 a certain eminence from the start. The 
 truth about these rules is that Mr. 
 Smiley never made any rules. He 
 never, in fact, had any intention of 
 conducting a hotel; at least, of conduct- 
 ing one on conventional plans. His 
 guests were, at first, nearly all of them 
 personal friends. They came very 
 much as they would have come to his 
 private home. It proved to most of 
 
VIEW FROM EAGLE CLIFF ROAD 
 
 SKY TOP ROAH 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 25 
 
 them a refreshing deHght to find one 
 place in the land free from the despotic 
 sway of a bar, of noisy dancing and bad 
 music, of monopolizing card parties, 
 and of a Sunday that differed from no 
 other day. Some of them used to re- 
 mark that it had the restful isolation 
 of an ocean voyage — though in these 
 days of wireless, the invasion of Mo- 
 honk remains even less than that of the 
 Atlantic. The first noticeable result 
 was in the personnel of the guests. The 
 house never advertised and never 
 sought publicity. Mr. Smiley himself 
 met every guest on arrival and was 
 present always to say God-speed. The 
 native atmosphere of the place brought 
 speedily together a body of well-bred, 
 unostentatious, thoughtful people. 
 They were not of any particular type 
 or caste. A classification of any of 
 those early registers would show a widely 
 
26 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 representative group of American men 
 of affairs. Lawyers, doctors, schol- 
 ars, bankers, merchants and executives 
 came in great numbers — and continued 
 to come year after year. That was the 
 abiding feature. It became a settled 
 summer abode for scores of well-known 
 families. It was perhaps noticeably 
 free from the ultra-fashionable, mer- 
 cerized or newspaper society, and has 
 always remained so. Dr. Theodore L. 
 Cuyler, who came to Mohonk first in 
 1879, describes his immediate meeting 
 with many prominent people. He 
 found here the nieces of Washington 
 Irving; he met for the first time the 
 merchant philanthropist, William E. 
 Dodge; Arnold Guyot, the distin- 
 guished scientist — for whom Guyot's 
 Hill is named; Philip Schaff, the tire- 
 less scholar, editor, friend of all the 
 world's great thinkers. He records his 
 
',p-f^l*, 
 
 •■^^^1." **" 
 
 
 -#l 
 
 
 •> ^, 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 27 
 
 meeting here with Mrs. Grant, wife of 
 the soldier President; with President 
 Hayes — and Roosevelt and Waring; 
 with Edward Everett Hale, Justices 
 Brewer and Strong, Senator Dawes 
 and many, many more. For nearly 
 thirty consecutive summers Dr. Cuyler 
 himself lent to the sparkling intellectual 
 life of Mohonk no small measure. 
 
 It would be strange indeed if a gath- 
 ering of serious and prominent people 
 like this could happen so often and 
 so steadily without something more 
 than mere social results. In 1879, Mr. 
 Albert Smiley was appointed by Presi- 
 dent Hayes to the Board of Indian 
 Commissioners. Surrendering himself 
 to a conscientious study of the problems 
 he became convinced that they needed 
 more discussion and care than the In- 
 dian Bureau could give them. In the 
 fall of 1883, he called the first Confer- 
 
28 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 ence of Friends of the Indians. He 
 invited to that first week's conference 
 a group of men and women either ex- 
 pert or vitally interested in Indian 
 affairs and in the betterment of Indian 
 conditions. It discussed, what subse- 
 quent conferences continued to do, 
 every phase of the Indian service and 
 plead jealously for the purity and the 
 honor of all relations of our National 
 Government to that service. The 
 consequences of these annual discus- 
 sions are matters of record — the whole 
 public sentiment has been changed and 
 the recommendations of the Confer- 
 ence have passed into actual legislation. 
 The first Conference had for its Presi- 
 dent, General Clinton B. Fisk. Among 
 the distinguished men who have since 
 filled the office may be mentioned the 
 late Philip C. Garrett, Dr. Merrill 
 E. Gates, Hon. John D. Long, Judge 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 29 
 
 Andrew S. Draper, Hon. Charles J. 
 Bonaparte, and Elmer E. Brown. 
 
 The reforms demanded in the Indian 
 Service being practically realized, the 
 Conference of 1904 decided to broaden 
 its field to include the welfare of colo- 
 nial peoples, and the name was changed 
 to ''Lake Mohonk Conference of 
 Friends of the Indian and Other De- 
 pendent Peoples." Under this title 
 the work of the Conference goes on, 
 and in October of each year Mr. Smiley 
 continues to invite to Mohonk as his 
 personal guests for three days several 
 hundred people to discuss questions 
 and to suggest measures relating to 
 colonial affairs. 
 
 The Conference on International Ar- 
 bitration met first in the month of June 
 in 1895 at Mohonk when Mr. Smiley 
 invited about fifty persons of note and 
 influence to come together and to form 
 
30 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 some organized plan for the study and 
 discussion of that great subject. The 
 purpose was from the first reasonable 
 and definite. It proposed to discuss 
 all practical means for substituting ar- 
 bitration for war, to suggest and to 
 urge methods and mechanism for the 
 settlement of international differences, 
 and to keep the public steadily in- 
 formed of its economic features and 
 possibilities. These Conferences, in- 
 creasing from fifty persons in 1895 to 
 more than three hundred in 1910, have 
 brought together not only the influen- 
 tial people of our own country, but 
 many distinguished statesmen, diplo- 
 mats, jurists and educators of other 
 countries. The activity of the Con- 
 ference, no longer confined to its brief 
 session, is now continuous. It main- 
 tains a permanent office, a permanent 
 secretary, furnishes statistics and in- 
 
f^SmBMMImm^'. :^'St. 
 
 
 
 ^■^l' 
 
 ^&^i^^^H 
 
 s^B%^ 
 
 
 ^^^^^^BlM^iiJr'^ .ijfJiSS 'i. 
 
 
 ^^W'^^M 
 
 r'^t*. 
 
 imr\y-^ 
 
 
 ii*j» 
 
THE STORY OF MOHONK 31 
 
 formation to the press and to the pub- 
 lic, and carries on wide and effective 
 propaganda. Nearly two hundred 
 boards of trade and chambers of com- 
 merce, representing the largest cities of 
 the land, co-operate with the Conference, 
 and many of them maintain arbitration 
 committees and send delegates. It has 
 brought about the introduction of the 
 study into various universities and col- 
 leges; has done much to inspire the 
 foundation of the New York Peace 
 Society, the Inter-collegiate Peace So- 
 ciety, the American Society of Inter- 
 national Law; and finally, as a signifi- 
 cant recognition of its achievements, 
 Albert K. Smiley has been named as one 
 of the administrators of Andrew Car- 
 negie's gift of ten million dollars to the 
 cause of international peace. 
 
 It is little wonder, therefore, that to 
 the army of guests who have climbed 
 
32 THE STORY OF MOHONK 
 
 to Mohonk for the past forty years, It 
 should have grown to be a sort of cita- 
 del — morally embattled and fearless 
 of the foe ; and little wonder, too, that 
 these same guests should conceive the 
 wish to dignify the approach to such 
 a fortress by some formal and expres- 
 sive portal, and so honor the life and 
 work of its master spirit. The Testi- 
 monial Gateway, erected to commem- 
 orate the golden anniversary of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Smiley's wedding, serves thus 
 the double purpose, and constitutes a 
 unique and remarkable testimony to 
 the public services of the place and of 
 the man. 
 
 The story of Mohonk then, becomes 
 obviously no simple chronicle of a 
 mountain resort — the annals of a pleas- 
 ant community of summer guests. Its 
 material success, however amazing, has 
 created only the setting for movements 
 
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THE STORY OF MOHONK 33 
 
 that have long since been justified and 
 which, affecting the honor and welfare 
 of the country, have also done much 
 to foster new ideals of human obliga- 
 tions, and to inspire new hopes for the 
 intercourse of men. 
 
SEP 6 1912 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 109 943 7