During Sullivan County's Silver Age from 1890 to 1915, Hurleyville was home to nine farmhouses that welcomed summer boarders. In Sullivan County's Golden Age from 1940 to 1965, also known as the Borscht Belt era, Hurleyville had about 32 hotels and 20 bungalow colonies. The Columbia Hotel, built in 1891 on a hillside overlooking the town, was the largest hotel in Hurleyville and the oldest operating hotel in the country when it closed in 1969. Other hotels included the Butler Lodge, Grandview, Majestic, Kramers, and the Morningside. Mel Brooks began his career at Butler Lodge as a teenager in the summer of 1941. From the 1920s through the early 1970s, the Borscht Belt was the leading summer resort destination for hundreds of thousands of predominantly East Coast American Jews. Exclusion from existing establishments in the 1920s drove Jewish entrepreneurs to create more than 500 resorts, 50,000 bungalows, and 1,000 rooming houses in Sullivan County and parts of Ulster County. The Borscht Belt provided a sense of community for working and vacationing Jews and strongly influenced American culture, especially entertainment, music, and sports. Some of the most well-known and influential people of the 20th century worked and vacationed there. Beginning around 1960, the Borscht Belt gradually declined because of factors including the growth of suburbia, inexpensive airfare, and generational changes.