page_title: Monroe County, Pennsylvania
section_title: Resorts
hierarchical_section_title: Monroe County, Pennsylvania / Resorts
caption_attribution_description: English: Inn At Pocono Manor Pool &amp; Front of Main Building This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 97000287
context_page_description: Monroe County is a county in the U.S Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the population was 169,842. Its county seat is Stroudsburg. The county was formed from sections of Northampton and Pike counties. Named in honor of James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, the county is located in northeastern Pennsylvania, along its border with New Jersey. Monroe County is coterminous with the East Stroudsburg, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area. It also borders the Lehigh Valley and has connections to the Delaware Valley, being a part of Philadelphia's Designated Media Market.
  The county is home to East Stroudsburg University. Monroe County is one of the fastest-growing counties in the state of Pennsylvania, partially due to tourism. The population has increased by over 70% since 1990, and the commercial and retail sectors have expanded significantly.
context_section_description: Two of the earliest Pocono resorts, founded by rival factions of the Philadelphia Quaker community, were located in Monroe County: Inn at Buck Hill Falls (1901) and Pocono Manor (1902).  These resorts did not allow liquor or dancing, and evening dress was discouraged. The Quakers "brought a quiet, unostentatious style to the region," but their hotels later developed from religious retreats into "luxurious mountain resorts." Buck Hill's stone facade became a model for close to 300 stately stone-and-shingle homes in the region. Pocono Manor offers sweeping vistas of the eastern and western Pocono region and has been referred to as the "Grand Lady of the Mountains." Buck Hill closed in 1990 and the Inn at Pocono Manor was mostly destroyed by fire in 2019.
  Skytop Lodge, built in 1928, is also located in Monroe County and has been described as a "Dutch Colonial-style manor house." Designed in reaction to the Quaker resorts, it had a dance floor and served liquor in a basement bar. Skytop offers thirty miles of hiking trails, and the main building "is surrounded by 5,000 acres of wood, glacial bogs, hemlock gorges, beaver marshes, and cascading waterfalls."
  The Buckwood Inn opened in Monroe County in 1911 and included the first golf course to be designed by renowned golf architect A. W. Tillinghast. Bandleader Fred Waring purchased the resort in 1943, renamed it the Shawnee Inn, and broadcast his radio shows from there. The Shawnee Inn is a Spanish colonial revival building with white-Moorish architecture and Spanish tiled roofs, and it was identified in the 1990s as the only resort on the banks of the Delaware River.
  Mount Airy Lodge, which expanded from an eight-room inn into the largest Pocono resort, was located in Monroe County.  It heavily advertised in the New York media market with the catchy jingle, "Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge."  Headliners, such as Bob Hope, Milton Berle, and Connie Francis, performed in the Crystal Room, Mount Airy's 2,000 seat theater.  Comedian Mickey Freeman said, "The food was lousy, but it was a legalized orgy."   The 1,200 acre resort's heyday was in the 1960s and 1970s before closing in 2001.  In October 2007 the Mount Airy Casino Resort opened on the site.
  As of July 2015, there were three resorts in Monroe County with indoor water parks: Great Wolf Lodge, Aquatopia at Camelback Resort, and Kalahari Resort.
caption: Inn At Pocono Manor (May 2015)
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