First incorporated in 1911 as Centreville and officially named Woodridge by 1917, Woodridge grew from an agricultural community of farms and boarding houses into a largely Jewish village with a diverse population. It had five Jewish-owned-and-operated consumer cooperatives that, in the anti-Semitic climate of the time, helped further the establishment of Jews in the area, and it had connections to the American Labor Party, the Workmen’s Circle, and Marxist movements. Notable residents included social activist Louis Proyect and Gay Liberation Movement activist Allen Young. By the 1950s, Woodridge was home to about 50 hotels and 39 bungalow colonies, including the Vegetarian Hotel, which catered to vegetarians and naturalists, and Grine Felder, an exclusive bungalow colony that hosted artists, bohemians, Yiddish music, and theater performers; other destinations included Hotels Israel, Rosemond, and Sunny Oaks. In 1995, Sunny Oaks hosted the first History of the Catskills Conference, which later formed the Catskills Institute. More broadly, from the 1920s through the early 1970s, the Borscht Belt was the preeminent summer resort destination for hundreds of thousands of predominantly East Coast American Jews after their exclusion from existing establishments in the 1920s drove Jewish entrepreneurs to create over 500 resorts, 50,000 bungalows, and 1,000 rooming houses in Sullivan County and parts of Ulster County. It provided a sense of community for working and vacationing Jews and strongly influenced American culture, especially entertainment, music, and sports, before beginning a gradual decline around 1960 because of factors including the growth of suburbia, inexpensive airfare, and generational changes.