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By Lauren Seikaly
Life at Lake Jeff was healthy and monastic. The greatest joy of all was swimming in the placid lake, where there might be an occasional fisherman lounging in a rowboat but no motorboats or jet skis to threaten the unwary swimmer.” –Oliver Sacks
ot all that long ago, Lake Jefferson was a bustling little hang-out spot one mile outside of the village of Jeffersonville. People gathered for swims, boat rides, fishing, and relaxing on its shores. Lake Jefferson Hotel stood on one of the banks and featured a dance hall, a barber shop, and even a bowling alley. Writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks discovered the spot in 1965 and wrote about it in his biography “On the Move.” “After I moved to New York in 1965, I took to exploring the country roads on my motorbike, looking for a suitable place to get away for occasional weekends. One Sunday, driving through the Catskills, I found a picturesque old wooden hotel perched by a lake, the Lake Jefferson Hotel. It was owned by a genial German American couple, Lou and Bertha Grupp, and we soon got to know each other. After a dozen or so weekends, I came to an agreement with the Grupps: I would rent a room in the
basement of the hotel, come and go when I wanted, and keep my things - basically a typewriter and swimming gear - there. Life at Lake Jeff was healthy and monastic. The greatest joy of all was swimming in the placid lake, where there might be an occasional fisherman lounging in a rowboat but no motorboats or jet skis to threaten the unwary swimmer.” But in 1998 the hotel closed and four years later it burned to the ground. Then in 2005, the Briscoe Dam upstream from the lake gave way in a flood. A torrent of water and silt was sent downstream and the spillway of the Lake Jeff dam was damaged. Small repairs have been made since then, but if more significant (and costly) repairs are not made soon, the dam will have to be torn down and Lake Jeff will be gone. In its place will be a swampy floodplain. Naturally, residents with homes on the lake are very eager to try to save it. In 2019, a few organized themselves and formed the Lake Jefferson Conservation Association
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