THE ST. MORITZ INN

This was just sent to us by Geoff Hoff, the grandson of the owner, who last week filled us in on some unknown
Camp history. He writes further...

The main, taller part was the original church, the main door to that is cut off in the picture. It was rarely used except in the summer when the snack bar upstairs was open. The entranceway you see, with the little roof and screendoor, was added by my grandfather and leads to the bar that was once the basement of the church. The longer low part off to the side of the main building was the restaurant which grandpa added. And, of course, the two-story building in the background is the boarding house. Grandpa built that twice. The first one (I think that's the one in this picture, not sure) burned down sometime in the late fifties or early sixties. This picture was from a post card that they had printed.

FROM THE FAMILY THAT OWNED THE MO'

We just received this note from a guy in LA (Geoff Hoff),
whose grandparents owned the Mo'.
Check it out, it's absolutely fascinating
My grandparents owned the St. Moritz Inn until it was razed by the government in preparation for the never completed Tox Island Dam. They bought it when my mother was in college.

Their names were Dominick (Nick) and Mary Musa. I lived there on and off through my childhood until we moved to Spokane, WA when I was 13. The inn had originally been a Dutch Reform church. The basement of the church became the bar and Grandpa built a restaurant on the side and a boarding house across the lawn, which is where my siblings and I stayed when we lived there.

My mom helped in the bar, and in summer in the snack bar that Grandma put together upstairs in the church proper for the teenagers from the camp. There were two camps nearby, one a Boy Scout camp and one designed for kids from the city. (I don't remember which was which... you all probably know better than me.) Our customers were a combination of locals (some quite colorful) and hunters and fishermen from the cities (New York and Newark.)

The brook across the street, the Flatbrook, was reported to be the best trout fishing stream in the East Coast. I remember quite fondly watching the big (to my young eyes) trucks stock the brook with trout by dumping them into the water from the little bridge that connected our road (The Old Mine Road) with the one that went up over the hill.

The building was beautiful with a lot of original hand hewn woodwork and we spent a lot of time looking for deer in the woods behind and around us. Sadly, as I say, none of the Inn still exists.

The picture you have listed here isn't of the Inn, it's of the Rosencrantz's house, the next place down from the Inn. I think the building across the raod from the building in this pic used to be the old gas station where we used to fill our bike tires. Interesting what you remember after all these years.The Inn no longer exists, it was torn down by the government.The Inn had two buildings, the bar and restaurant, and, across the lawn, the boarding house.

The old Inn

I remember the St. Moritz Inn -1962-66. Marv Fleischman (Boys Head Counselor, myself and my brother Dave used to go there some afternoons for beers and many evenings (with Marv's wife Lee), for some good meals. I even remember one incident at night where Marv caught some older teenagers from another camp at the Inn. They had snuck onto campus to the infirmary (earlier in the day) which was in Siberia and peeked in the windows. Marv really scared them one night at the Inn (he grabbed one kid by the neck and just pulled him out of the chair), and they never bothered "Pokono-Ramona" again.
I also remember when some of the waiters in '62 broke Ted Blecker's (a counselor) nose in a fight. We had some very tough camper waiters in 1962. Towards the end of that summer (i think), some were arrested for stealing cases of beer from the Inn. I think the owners took care of the "arrest' and the boys were sent home. I am trying to remember other "events" from the Good Old days.

myron weintraub
Bunk 6 in 1962 Color War General of the Maroon team-theme New Yorkers (my nickname for the next 4 years became Myroon), and I was the General of the Maroon Team for 4 years.

Division Head 63-65
Athletic Director 66