Sugar Loaf NY

06/18/2026

Intersection of Pine Hill Rd. and "West" (Main) Street, looking East.
The white big building is the Grange Hall, which today is the Cancun Inn Restaurant.
Across the street is a feed store, and to the photo's LH side of it, partially obscured by a tree is the Railroad station, and further to the left is the original Creamery, and the Creamery Pond.
In the distant background, on the photo's left, is what's now known as Knapp's View, appearing to have changed very little since this 1904 photo.
This was long before there was a Wood Rd. across from the Grange building, or a "Bypass" road intersection where "West" (Main) Street bends to the left....and certainly long before the ugly, suburban concrete sidewalk was recently installed on the photo's left foreground side of "West" (Main) Street.

06/17/2026

Endangered frogs of the Loaf!
(Natural History IS part of our NYS-mandated mission)
In 2012, our Sugar Loaf Historical Society's president
joined a research module to track a newly-described species, later named the "Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog".
(Under the Sugar Loaf Historical Society's NYS Education Department incorporation, natural history research, statewide, is foremost among our purposes)
By 2014, SLHS president Jay Westerveld had identified the nation's largest metapopulation of the new species, out on the border of Orange and Sussex counties, as well as a robust populations in Chester, at the Orange county Land Trust's "Birnberg Preserve" near Camp LaGuardia, in the Black Meadow marsh that extends into the Chester Industrial Park, and in the Scotts Meadow marshlands directly across Sugar Loaf's 'Main Street' from the Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center.
At the time, the new species hadn't yet received any state protection status, and none was expected, as the NYSDEC rarely "uplists" species for higher levels of protection.
Then, in April of 2025, the NYSDEC announced that the Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog was receiving the state's highest level of protection, listing it as "endangered", and making it the second of only 2 "endangered" frogs in NYS.
(Our Sugar Loaf Historical Society's president, Jay Westerveld, was also responsible for identifying NY's largest, by a wide margin, population of the other "Endangered" frog species, back in the 20th century).
Here's one of The Loaf's own NYS *Endangered* Atlantic Coast Leopard Frogs enjoying its home beneath Sugar Loaf Mountain, here in Scott's Meadow right across from the Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center.

06/16/2026

Did you know that the Loaf had a one-room schoolhouse for many decades, spanning from the late 18th into the early 20th century?
The white brick building that you pass at the beginning of Main Street, (At the Chester end) in front of the modern Sugar Loaf firehouse, and diagonally across the street from the Post Office... that was originally the "Sugar Loaf Schoolhouse", similar in shape and size to the "Lake Schoolhouse" just a few miles West off of Bellvale Road, on Lake Station Road ( still in the current day town of Chester).
Some of our Sugar Loaf Historical Society's founders' ancestors were among the first teachers at Sugar Loaf's proud little school.
Today it hosts the "Chester Fire District" Commissioners' offices, with many revisions having been made in its decades of efficient repurposing.
Take a look at the current iteration of the building in the comments below, and you can see where and how it's changed over the years.

06/13/2026

20 years ago, two of our founding directors were knee-deep in ecological research to help guide policy decisions and general scientific knowledge about the unique populations of species in our region ( and well beyond), as seen in this October 2006 Times Herald Record article.
In this same year, we were working with NYS recommendations to customize our Sugar Loaf Historical Society to include in its mission the Research and Preservation of Natural History, statewide.
The NYS Education Department's chartering director suggested a mission for our org. that would encompass both cultural and natural history, statewide.
Just a few months later, the Sugar Loaf Historical Society was incorporated, and our research arm's work on Natural History became a state mandate.

Like dark bumps, turtles line up on a log in Harriman State Park. They crane their necks to soak up the fall sun. And that's bad. These are red-eared sliders — out-of-state reptiles — that might be c…

06/12/2026

Another 1980s shot of Peter's Candle Shop, back when it was still called "Resplendent Candles".
Peter is the heart and soul of the Loaf, in our opinion

06/11/2026

Main Street, 1980s, with Peter's original 1968 "Resplendent Candles" sign out in front.

06/10/2026

Sugar Loaf's ORIGINAL RR Station, c. 1905.
This building was across the highway ( North side) from the current Station ( now repurposed as a coffee place) , which was placed there in 1972, flat-bedded in from Chester, many years after the first one on the South side of the HWY had burned down.
VERY few photos of this original station exist.
In the background (LH side of photo) you can see the Minard Sutton House.

06/01/2026

The Sugar Loaf Historical Society reminds visitors to Knapp's View to stay to the paths this time of year, as rare/protected ground-nesting birds have eggs and chicks in their nests in the higher grasses.
Knapp's View hosts two relatively rare ground-nesting species, the Bobolink and the Meadowlark, that aren't found in many other spots in Orange county; the Sugar Loaf Historical Society's founders were the first to identify this parcel as habitat for these two species, back in the 1970s.