Before The Sunshine State Stole The Spotlight

Long before Florida beaches and Las Vegas casinos became shorthand for an American getaway, vacationers were already packing trunks for famous resort towns scattered across the country. Some promised healing mineral water, others offered cool mountain air, oceanfront hotels, elaborate amusement parks, or the chance to mingle with society’s wealthiest families. These destinations helped create American vacation culture generations before commercial air travel made warmer destinations easier to reach.

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Saratoga Springs Was A 19th-Century Celebrity Resort

Mineral springs helped turn Saratoga Springs, New York, into one of America’s fashionable 19th-century resorts. Visitors came partly because the waters were believed to have health benefits, but Saratoga gradually became as much a social destination as a wellness retreat.

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The Springs Built Saratoga’s Reputation

The National Park Service credits Saratoga’s mineral springs as a primary factor in the city’s development as a fashionable resort. Their popularity eventually became a problem, with heavy commercial exploitation of the springs threatening the water table by the end of the 19th century.

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Newport Was The Ultimate Summer Address

Newport, Rhode Island, was attracting fashionable summer visitors by the early to mid-1800s. Its temperate coastal climate and picturesque setting helped transform a former colonial port into a summer destination decades before the most famous Gilded Age mansions appeared.

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Then The Millionaires Started Building

During the late 19th century, wealthy industrialists and financiers turned Newport into a spectacular summer colony. Families constructed increasingly elaborate “cottages,” including The Breakers and Marble House, while dinners, sporting events, parties, and other social rituals made Newport synonymous with elite summer life.

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Cape May Was Famous Remarkably Early

Cape May, New Jersey, has a substantial historical claim to being America’s oldest seaside resort. By the 19th century, it had developed an international reputation, and its surviving collection of Victorian-era houses, hotels, and commercial buildings preserves the appearance of that resort boom.

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Presidents Vacationed At Cape May Too

Cape May was more than a beach destination. Congress Hall became associated with several presidents, while large hotels and summer cottages expanded throughout the 19th century. The arrival of rail transportation increased competition along the Jersey Shore but helped bring vacation travel to larger audiences.

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Atlantic City Had The Boardwalk

Atlantic City was deliberately developed as a resort beginning in the 1850s. Railroad access from Camden helped bring visitors to its beaches, hotels, restaurants, and shops, while promoters also advertised the fresh seaside air as part of the destination’s appeal.

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A Simple Walkway Became An Icon

Atlantic City’s first boardwalk opened in 1870, originally intended to prevent beach sand from being tracked into hotels and railroad cars. The walkway eventually became the city’s commercial heart, surrounded by hotels, attractions, shops, and amusement piers.

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Bar Harbor Attracted The “Rusticators”

Before Bar Harbor, Maine, became associated with enormous estates, early summer visitors came for something simpler. Artists publicized Mount Desert Island’s scenery during the mid-1800s, encouraging so-called “Rusticators” to arrive seeking nature, solitude, and relief from crowded cities.

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Wealth Changed Bar Harbor’s Vacation Scene

By the late 1800s, wealthy families were building elaborate summer “cottages” around Bar Harbor. The community became a nationally known retreat for affluent vacationers, although economic changes and the destructive 1947 fire eventually brought its grand cottage era to an end.

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Mackinac Island Became The Midwest’s Great Escape

Mackinac Island was already a popular vacation destination before its famous Grand Hotel opened. Its Great Lakes location made it accessible by steamship and rail connections, allowing urban residents from the growing cities of the Midwest to escape north during summer.

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The Grand Hotel Raised The Stakes

Opening in 1887, the Grand Hotel elevated Mackinac Island into the company of fashionable resorts such as Newport and Saratoga Springs. Wealthy Midwestern families arrived in growing numbers, and contemporary newspapers closely followed the prominent guests spending summers there.

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Hot Springs Promised Rest And Restoration

Visitors had been drawn to the thermal waters around Hot Springs, Arkansas, long before modern spa weekends existed. By the 1840s, wooden bathhouses lined the area, beginning a resort culture that combined leisure with widely held beliefs about the therapeutic value of bathing.

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Bathhouse Row Became An Attraction Itself

Hot Springs grew increasingly sophisticated as crude early bathing facilities gave way to elaborate buildings and landscaped surroundings. The surviving Bathhouse Row reflects an era when bathing could be an elegant recreational activity as well as a treatment visitors believed might improve their health.

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White Sulphur Springs Drew Powerful Guests

The resort now known as The Greenbrier traces its guest tradition in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to 1778. Visitors came to experience mineral springs believed to have therapeutic properties, making the mountain community a destination long before modern American resort culture emerged.

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Summer Society Gathered At The Greenbrier

By the 1830s, politicians, lawyers, diplomats, merchants, and other prominent guests were gathering at White Sulphur Springs. Its elevation provided an appealing summer escape from lower-elevation heat, while railroad service arriving in 1873 helped support the resort’s later growth.

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French Lick Became Famous For Its Water

Southern Indiana seems an unlikely place for an internationally known resort scene, yet French Lick’s reputation developed during the 19th century. Mineral springs attracted visitors seeking water cures, and multiple rail lines eventually carried travelers from around the country into the region.

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West Baden Went Even Bigger

Nearby West Baden Springs competed for the same vacation crowd. Its spectacular replacement hotel opened in 1902 with a vast domed atrium and was promoted as the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” giving rural Indiana one of America’s most distinctive luxury resorts.

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Coney Island Was Already A Seaside Escape

Coney Island had developed into a seaside resort by the middle of the 19th century. Its proximity to New York City gave urban residents an accessible escape, while later amusement developments transformed the waterfront into something far more energetic than a conventional beach retreat.

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Amusement Parks Changed The Vacation Formula

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Coney Island was famous for amusement parks, rides, spectacle, and entertainment. Luna Park and other attractions helped establish a model in which a destination itself became the entertainment rather than simply a place to relax.

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Asbury Park Joined The Jersey Resort Boom

Asbury Park was established as an oceanfront community in the 1870s and quickly developed into a major Jersey Shore destination. By the late 19th century, it ranked among the region’s most popular resorts and eventually attracted visitors beyond the traditional summer season.

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Trains Helped Bring The Crowds

Historic images of 1880s Asbury Park show beaches, lakes, pavilions, a pier, and railroad access already shaping the community. Like Atlantic City and other early resorts, convenient transportation was crucial to turning a coastal settlement into a practical getaway for city residents.

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Oak Bluffs Developed Its Own Resort Identity

Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard grew from a community connected to religious gatherings into a notable summer destination. Black visitors had a presence on the island during the 19th century, and the town later developed an especially important African American vacation community.

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The Shearer Cottage Became A Landmark

Charles and Henrietta Shearer established a seasonal inn in Oak Bluffs in 1912 that became the first African American-owned guest house on Martha’s Vineyard. Along with the popular beach known as the Inkwell, it helped anchor a growing Black summer community.

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Coronado Brought Grand Resort Culture West

California had its own answer to the great eastern resort hotels. Hotel del Coronado opened in 1888 after developers Elisha Babcock Jr. and Hampton Story set out to create an ambitious beach resort and simultaneously developed transportation, utilities, streets, and other infrastructure around it.

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America Was Vacationing Long Before Vegas

These destinations show that American tourism was thriving well before Florida’s mass-tourism boom or Las Vegas became an entertainment capital. Railroads, steamships, mineral springs, grand hotels, beaches, and amusement parks had already taught generations of Americans that getting away could be an event in itself.

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