Reminds me of this photo series;
Scenes from D-Day, then and now
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/06/scenes-from-d-day-then-and-now/100752/

It was quite the experience. Rooms were huge, meals were huge, all sorts of amenities including an ice rink.
Sadly, the carpets were stained, the rooms shabby and the experience not wonderful.
Went to see my brother-in-law being installed as president of an organization.
The resorts were already failing rapidly by then. I think they were killed off by air conditioning.

That was really fascinating and well done.

The big-resort feel of the era from the late 1940s through the early 1970s was gone by the time of my visit. Flagstaff Mountain Resort at the southern edge of the Poconos region had been sold to a religious denomination. Many years had passed since its era of featuring sell-out performances by the likes of Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Band.

A few state-of-the-industry resorts which were built in the 1980s are in business today. They survived mostly because in the 1990s (I think) the Pennsylvania legislature allowed casino gambling in the Poconos.

I am thinking that the quaint bed-and-breakfast inns are still present. However, if you are going during the weekend of a major race at the Poconos Speedway, make sure that you book your reservations well in advance.

I remember clean water, White Beauty View Resort, and tons of happy, fun times. We moved from there but my parents went back to visit an I am glad I didn't go with them. They told me how it has changed so much and is not charming any longer. I prefer to keep my good memories.

The guests at the resort seemed very nice, as though they respected the fact that everyone there had worked hard to save for their vacations and wanted to create perfect vacation memories to warm their hearts whenever the Pennsylvania winter would eventually arrive. In that era, there occurred unspoken feelings of communal bonding among resort guests who elevated their annual visiting of a particular vacation destination to a mindset which bordered on that of a pilgrimage.

By the same guy who does the Dead Malls series. He did some Poconos honeymoon places including the one DH and I went to a million years ago. That one (Penn Hills) had been vandalized pretty badly. Another one, The Summit, was preserved-in-aspic 70's tacky. Creepy and fascinating. Is the US the only country that just lets places like that simply rot?

drove the resorts in the Poconos back in the day. With the advent of Atlantic City and Las Vegas all that changed and the Poconos were relegated to the backwaters of the entertainment circuit. Adapt of die.

It got to be cheaper to fly to the islands and go on a short cruise than to stay a week at one of those places.

and warm beaches might be more appealing to some than driving to the mountains

Is that, despite vandalism, some of the indoor pics show the same furnishings and flooring! It's like a dystopian time capsule!

I live in Pittsburgh in the southwest corner of PA. And yes I remember the heyday of the Pocono (and Catskills) resorts.

What's completely changed is that these areas are no longer vacation spots. People used to go there for one or 2 weeks per year and go home again to NYC or NJ. But now they can live there full-time, and commute to their jobs in the city. Lots of people do live there full-time.

So the resorts lost their appeal and most of them are closed. They should be turned into residential nursing homes and retirement communities. They'd be ideal for that.

than escaping to the mountains.

...like to FL, HI or CA. The Poconos and the Catskills became boring against more exotic destinations farther away.

GREAT OP! K&R!

used to be THE spot for a honeymoon if you were from anywhere nearby other than maybe Niagara Falls. I was married in the late '60's and many of my cohorts from Ohio were going there on their honeymoons.

These are cool pictures.

Poconos honeymoon places were still very popular. I recall there was a push to get gambling there (after Atlantic City did) and it just never happened. I think they started dying off in the 90's as other vacation destinations got cheaper and easier to get to.

Going back in time.
So much life back then,
but now, quiet and still with memories.....

Thank You

Wow.

I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought so.

The more I looked, the more depressed I got. Whew. Bad stuff. Admirable and interesting, but DEPRESSING.

These properties will eventually be re-purposed for big profits.

The Poconos are popular for people who don't mind driving a couple hours into the city. For example people who work out of their house as consultants or commission sales, a lot of them get houses in western NJ and eastern PA. It's considered "commuting distance" to NY/Philly now.

Like I said earlier, this is no longer a vacation spot, it's where people live full-time. I can't explain why the resort owners haven't kept up their properties, but they're missing a big opportunity to cash in.

Thanks for posting, even though it was sad to see these places in an advanced state of decay, I still found it irresistible to look at.

...for most of our problems, and for some solutions to what were once problems.

once liberals went out of power in 1969 and the supply siders started taking over, depressing wages and dismantling the social safety net. This is a direct result of the inequality we have now, labor strip mined to fatten a few rich men who don't need things like this.

Don't forget, also, that these places employed hundreds of seasonal workers, many of them college kids who used their paychecks to stay out of debt over the coming school year. Wages were better and tips were good.

This is echoed all over the country by dead malls and other amenities that couldn't afford to stay open when the demand dried up because people couldn't think of spending on anything beyond subsistence.

This is what this country has become. I hope the Republicans are proud of it.

while the rest of Eastern PA has a moribund economy. But hey, DeNaples was able to make a billion dollars off landfills and gambling at Mt. Airy. He's been accused of being a mobster.

continue to vote in and love those that screw them over as they sink much of the country into poverty. FFS, so many in the US are so damn stupid when they vote. Then we have gerrymandered districts.

I'm always intrigued by 'then and now photos. They always present a thought provoking history lesson.

Thanks for the link

had a chance to drive by the hotel of the first night of our honeymoon in 2002. It was sad to see it in disrepair.

Thank you for posting

A white people's wonderland.