The Jewish had the Borscht Belt hotels, but the Irish also once claimed their own little corner of the idyllic Catskills.
In September 2010, the main building at the Blackthorne Resort in East Durham burned to the ground. The resort lost its office, dining hall, and bar in the fire, but Kevin Ferguson gained an epiphany.
Ferguson, 55, is a journalist in Arlington, Massachusetts. He grew up in Northern New Jersey. But much of his heart and soul resided at that lost building in the Catskills. As a child, he spent nearly every summer there among a clan of Irish immigrants and first-generation natives in what was known as the Irish Alps.
