When it comes to traveling, there are some of us who love learning the history of the area that we are visiting. For some bigger towns, their history can be seen easily by just walking down their cobblestone streets coupled with the beautiful architecture of the time. For other towns, it is the act of visiting an old home or plantation that then you will truly get to know what life was like in that town in a long forgotten era. The last way to get to know a new area is by exploring the home and surrounding land of someone who was so inspired by it that they wrote about it and became famous from it. For us in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania it is the Zane Grey Museum. We at Ledges Hotel not only love visiting the Zane Grey Museum when we can but also love recommending it to our guests who love learning a bit about history. Come explore the Zane Grey Museum and see why this area made Zane Grey the man he was.
The first thing to know about Zane Grey is that he loved fishing. One of the main reasons why the Zane Grey Museum is where it is is because that it converges on two major rivers in our area, Lackawaxen and Delaware Rivers. This area is extremely influential in not only Zane’s writing life but his personal life as well. It was in this area that as a young man he would escape and fish and canoe. He would also spend his free time playing baseball which proved to be successful for him in landing him a chance to go to the University of Pennsylvania in their Dental Department. Zane and his wife Dolly came back to the area and settled into a farmhouse that would eventually be known as the Zane Grey Museum.
After a while in the area Zane and Dolly had an itching to go out west and explore the California coast. They always kept the house that would be known as the Zane Grey Museum and visited quite often but did spend a good portion of their time in other places. It was also out west that Zane Grey honed in his passion and skill for fishing. The sport took him all over the world trying, and succeeding, in catching some of the biggest fish that are still on record today. All the while through his travel and other projects his main love was writing. He was very prolific in his life and published many western/frontier adventure books as well as many articles on fishing and being in the outdoors.
After Grey’s death, his wife Dolly sold the house to Helen James who for many years ran it as the Zane Grey Inn. During her stay at the house she over the years began to find many pieces of memorabilia of Zane Grey and would display it for others to learn about. Today, the Zane Grey Museum is run by the National Park Service as a self-guided museum that also has staff on hand to answer any questions you might have.
It is amazing attractions like the Zane Grey Museum that draws visitors to our wonderful town of Hawley. When visitors who love history do come to Hawley, they love staying with us at Ledges Hotel. Our exquisite hotel is housed inside an old glass factory and many aspects of the time are seen within our walls. Our designers took very special care to make sure that the history of the glass factory can always be seen. However, inside our hotel, we make sure our guests have every modern amenity available to them like free Wi-Fi, flat screen TVs and many eco-initiates that keep our hotel’s carbon foot print low. Ready to step back in time and learn more about life at the Zane Grey Museum? Contact our amazing staff today and let us help you plan a wonderful trip to the Pocono Mountains.
Photo by: Nicholas A. Tonelli